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CREATIVE    CRITICISM 


CREATIVE    CRITICISM 


ESSAYS  ON  THE  UNITY  OF 
GENIUS  AND  TASTE 


BY 

J.  E.  SPINGARN 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
1917 


Copyright,  191 7, 

BY 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


To  my  friend 

BENEDETTO  CROCE 

the  most  original  of  all  modern 
thinkers  on  Art 


?.  n^c. 


NOTE 

Three  of  the  four  essays  in  this  volume  have 
already  appeared  in  print.  The  first,  "The 
New  Criticism,"  was  delivered  as  a  lecture  at 
Columbia  University  in  1910,  and  was  pub- 
lished, under  the  title  of  "Literary  Criticism," 
in  the  Columbia  University  Lectures  on  Litera- 
ture; "Dramatic  Criticism  and  the  Theatre" 
was  published  in  the  fourth  volume  of  Essays 
and  Studies  by  Members  of  the  English  Associa- 
tion (Oxford:  Clarendon  Press);  and  "Creative 
Connoisseurship"  was  written  as  a  letter  to  an 
artist  friend  and  was  printed  in  the  New  York 
Evening  Post.  All  of  them  have  undergone 
more  or  less  alteration,  and  a  few  passages 
taken  from  an  article  on  "The  Seven  Arts  and 
the  Seven  Confusions"  in  the  Seven  Arts  have 
been  added  to  them.  The  essays  are  now 
gathered  together  in  the  hope  that  they  may 
stimulate  interest  in  a  province  of  aesthetic 
theory  which  has  been  largely  neglected  by 
the  English-speaking  world. 


"Who  can  doubt  that  Criticism,  as  well  as  Poetry,  can 
have  wings?" 

Barbey  d'Aurevilly. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  NEW  CRITICISM 3 

DRAMATIC  CRITICISM  AND  THE  THEATRE.  .  .       47 

PROSE  AND  VERSE 99 

CREATIVE  CONNOISSEURSHIP II7 


APPENDIX:  A  NOTE  ON  GENIUS  AND  TASTE.     I33 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM 

*' What  droll  creatures  these  college  pro- 
fessors are  whenever  they  talk  about  art," 
wrote  Flaubert  in  one  of  his  letters,  and 
voiced  the  world's  opinion  of  academic 
criticism.  For  the  world  shares  the  view 
of  the  Italian  poet  that  "monks  and  pro- 
fessors cannot  write  the  lives  of  poets," 
and  looks  only  to  those  rich  in  literary 
experience  for  its  opinions  on  literature. 
But  the  poets  themselves  have  had  no 
special  grudge  against  academic  criticism 
that  they  have  not  felt  equally  for  every 
other  kind.  For  the  most  part,  they  have 
objected  to  all  criticism,  since  what  each 
mainly  seeks  in  his  own  case  is  not  criti- 
cism, but  uncritical  praise.  "Kill  the  dog, 
he  is  a  reviewer,"  cried  the  young  Goethe; 
and  in  an  age  nearer  our  own  William 
Morris  expressed   his   contempt  for  those 


4      CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

who  earn  a  livelihood  by  writing  their 
opinions  of  the  works  of  others.  Fortu- 
nately for  Criticism,  it  does  not  live  by  the 
grace  of  poets,  to  whom  it  can  be  of  small 
service  at  its  best,  but  by  the  grace  of  others 
who  have  neither  the  poet's  genius  nor  the 
critic's  insight.  I  hope  to  persuade  you 
this  evening  that  the  poets  have  been  mis- 
taken in  their  very  conception  of  the  critic's 
craft,  which  lives  by  a  power  that  poets  and 
critics  share  together.  The  secret  of  this 
power  has  come  to  men  slowly,  and  the 
knowledge  they  have  gained  by  it  has 
transformed  their  idea  of  Criticism.  What 
this  secret  is,  and  into  what  new  paths 
Criticism  is  being  led  by  it,  is  the  subject  of 
my  lecture  to-night. 


At  the  end  of  the  last  century,  France 
once  more  occupied  the  center  of  that  stage 
whose  auditors  are  the  inheritors  of  Euro- 
pean civilization.  Once  more  all  the  world 
listened  while  she  talked  and  played,  and 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM        5 

some  of  the  most  brilliant  of  her  talk  was 
now  on  the  question  of  the  authority  of 
Criticism.  It  is  not  my  purpose  to  tell  you 
(what  you  know  already)  with  what  sober 
and  vigorous  learning  the  official  critics  of 
the  Revue  des  deux  Mondes  espoused  the 
cause  of  old  gods  with  the  new  weapons  of 
science,  and  with  what  charm  and  tact, 
with  what  grace  and  suppleness  of  thought, 
Jules  Lemaitre  and  Anatole  France,  to 
mention  no  others,  defended  the  free  play 
of  the  appreciative  mind.  Some  of  the 
sparks  that  were  beaten  out  on  the  anvil 
of  controversy  have  become  fixed  stars, 
the  classical  utterances  of  Criticism,  as 
when  Anatole  France  described  the  critic 
not  as  a  judge  imposing  sentence,  but  as  a 
sensitive  soul  detailing  his  "adventures 
among  masterpieces." 

To  have  sensations  in  the  presence  of  a 
work  of  art  and  to  express  them,  that  is 
the  function  of  Criticism  for  the  impres- 
sionistic critic.  His  attitude  he  would  ex- 
press somewhat  in  this  fashion:  "Here  is 


6      CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

a  beautiful  poem,  let  us  say  Shelley's 
Prometheus  Unbound.  To  read  it  is  for  me 
to  experience  a  thrill  of  pleasure.  My  de- 
light in  it  is  itself  a  judgment,  and  what 
better  judgment  is  it  possible  for  me  to 
give?  All  that  I  can  do  is  to  tell  how  it 
affects  me,  what  sensations  it  gives  me. 
Other  men  will  derive  other  sensations  from 
it,  and  express  them  differently;  they  too 
have  the  same  right  as  I.  Each  of  us,  if 
we  are  sensitive  to  impressions  and  express 
ourselves  well,  will  produce  a  new  work  of 
art  to  replace  the  work  which  gave  us  our 
sensations.  That  is  the  art  of  Criticism, 
and  beyond  that  Criticism  cannot  go." 

We  shall  not  begrudge  this  exquisite  soul 
the  pleasure  of  his  sensations  or  his  cult  of 
them,  nor  would  he  be  disconcerted  if  we 
were  to  point  out  that  the  interest  has  been 
shifted  from  the  work  of  art  to  his  own 
impressions.  Let  us  suppose  that  you  say 
to  him:  "We  are  not  interested  in  you,  but 
in  Prometheus  Unbound.  To  describe  the 
state  of  your  health  is  not  to  help  us  to 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM        7 

understand  or  to  enjoy  the  poem.  Your 
criticism  constantly  tends  to  get  away  from 
the  work  of  art,  and  to  center  attention 
on  yourself  and  your  feelings." 

But  his  answer  would  not  be  difficult  to 
find:  "What  you  say  is  true  enough.  My 
criticism  tends  to  get  farther  and  farther 
from  the  work  of  art  and  to  cast  a  light 
upon  myself;  but  all  criticism  tends  to  get 
away  from  the  work  of  art  and  to  substi- 
tute something  in  its  place.  The  impres- 
sionist substitutes  himself,  but  what  other 
form  of  criticism  gets  closer  to  Prometheus 
Unbound?  Historical  criticism  takes  us 
away  from  it  in  a  search  of  the.-eiiYiron- 
ment,  the  age,  the  race,  the  poetic  school 
of  the  artist;  it  tells  us  to  read  the  history 
of  the  French  Revolution,  Godwin's  Polit- 
ical Justice^  the  Prometheus  Bound  of 
^schylus,  and  Calderon's  Mdgico  Prodi- 
gioso.  Psychological  criticism  takes  me 
away  from  the  poem,  and  sets  me  to  work 
on  the  biography  of  the  poet;[I  wish  to 
enjoy   Prometheus    Unbound,    and    instead 


8      CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

I  am  asked  to  become  acquainted  with 
Shelley  the  man.  Dogmatic  criticism  does 
not  get  any  closer  to  the  work  of  art  by 
testing  it  according  to  rules  and  standards; 
it  sends  me  to  the  Greek  dramatists,  to 
Shakespeare,  to  Aristotle's  Poetics^  possibly 
to  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species,  in  order  that 
I  may  see  how  far  Shelley  has  failed  to 
give  dramatic  reality  to  his  poem,  or  has 
failed  to  observe  the  rules  of  his  genre; 
but  that  means  the  study  of  other  works, 
and  not  of  Prometheus  Unbound.  -Esthe- 
tics takes  me  still  farther  afield  into  specu- 
lations on  art  and  beauty.  And  so  it  is 
with  every  form  of  Criticism.  Do  not 
deceive  yourself.  All  criticism  tends  to 
shift  the  interest  from  the  work  of  art  to 
something  else.  The  other  critics  give  us 
history,  politics,  biography,  erudition,  met- 
aphysics. As  for  me,  I  re-dream  the  poet's 
dream,  and  if  I  seem  to  write  lightly,  it  is 
because!  have  awakened,  and  smile  to 
think  I  have  mistaken  a  dream  for  reality. 
I  at  least  strive  to  replace  one  work  of  art 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM        9 

by  another,  and  art  can  only  find  Its  alter 
ego  in  art." 

It  would  be  idle  to  detail  the  arguments 
with  which  the  advocates  of  the  opposing 
forms  of  Criticism  answered  these  ques- 
tionings. Literary  erudition  and  evolu- 
tionary science  were  the  chief  weapons 
used  to  fight  this  modern  heresy,  but  the 
one  is  an  unwieldy  and  the  other  a  useless 
weapon  in  the  field  of  aesthetic  thought. 
On  some  sides,  at  least,  the  position  of  the 
impressionists  was  impregnable;  but  two 
points  of  attack  were  open  to  their  oppo- 
nents. They  could  combat  the  notion 
that  taste  is  a  substitute  for  learning,  or 
learning  a  substitute  for  taste,  since  both 
are  vital  for  Criticism;  and  they  could 
maintain  that  the  relativity  of  taste  does 
not  in  any  sense  afi"ect  its  authority.  In 
this  sense  impressionistic  Criticism  erred 
only  less  grievously  than  the  "judicial" 
Criticism  which  opposed  it. 

But  these  arguments  are  not  my  present 
concern;  what  I  wish  to  point  out  is  that 


\ 


lo    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

the  objective  and  dogmatic  forms  of  Criti- 
cism were  fighting  no  new  battle  against 
impressionistic  Criticism  in  that  decade  of 
controversy.  It  was  a  battle  as  old  as  the 
earliest  reflection  on  the  subject  of  poetry, 
if  not  as  old  as  the  sensitiveness  of  poets. 
Modern  literature  begins  with  the  same 
doubts,  with  the  same  quarrel.  In  the 
sixteenth  century  the  Italians  were  formu- 
lating that  classical  code  which  imposed 
itself  on  Europe  for  two  centuries,  and 
which,  even  in  our  generation,  Brunetiere 
has  merely  disguised  under  the  trappings 
of  natural  science.  They  evolved  the 
dramatic  unities,  and  all  those  rules  which 
the  poet  Pope  imagined  to  be  "Nature 
still  but  Nature  methodized."  But  at  the 
very  moment  when  their  spokesman  Sca- 
liger  was  saying  that  "Aristotle  is  our 
emperor,  the  perpetual  dictator  of  all  the 
fine  arts,"  another  Italian,  Pietro  Aretino, 
was  insisting  that  there  is  no  rule  except 
the  whim  of  genius  and  no  standard  of 
judgment  beyond  individual  taste. 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      ii 

The  Italians  passed  on  the  torch  to  the 
French  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
from  that  day  to  this  the  struggle  between 
the  two  schools  has  never  ceased  to  agitate 
the  progress  of  Criticism  in  France.  Boi- 
leau  against  Saint-Evremond,  Classicists 
against  Romanticists,  dogmatists  against 
impressionists, — the  antinomy  is  deep  in 
the  French  nature,  indeed  in  the  nature  of 
Criticism  itself.  Listen  to  this:  "It  is  not 
for  the  purpose  of  deciding  on  the  merit 
of  this  noble  poet  [Virgil],  nor  of  harming 
his  reputation,  that  I  have  spoken  so  freely 
concerning  him.  The  world  will  continue 
to  think  what  it  does  of  his  beautiful  verses; 
and  as  for  me,  I  judge  nothing,  I  only  say 
what  I  think,  and  what  effect  each  of  these 
things  produces  on  my  heart  and  mind." 
Surely  these  words  are  from  the  lips  of 
Lemaitre  himself!  "I  judge  nothing;  I 
only  say  what  I  feel."  But  no,  these  are 
the  utterances  of  the  Chevalier  de  Mere, 
a  wit  of  the  age  of  Louis  XIV,  and  he  is 
writing  to  the  secretary  of  that  stronghold 


12    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

of  authority,  the  French  Academy.  For 
some  men,  even  in  the  age  of  Boileau, 
criticism  was  nothing  but  an  "adventure 
among  masterpieces." 

No,  it  is  no  new  battle;  it  is  the  perpetual 
conflict  of  Criticism.  In  every  age  impres- 
sionism (or  enjoyment)  and  dogmatism  (or 
judgment)  have  grappled  with  one  another. 
They  are  the  two  sexes  of  Criticism;  and 
to  say  that  they  flourish  in  every  age  is  tb 
say  that  every  age  has  its  masculine  as 
well  as  its  feminine  criticism, — the  mascu- 
line criticism  that  may  or  may  not  force 
its  own  standards  on  literature,  but  that 
never  at  all  events  is  dominated  by  the 
object  of  its  studies;  and  the  feminine 
criticism  that  responds  to  the  lure  of  art 
with  a  kind  of  passive  ecstasy.  In  the  age 
of  Boileau  it  was  the  masculine  type  which 
gave  the  tone  to  Criticism;  in  our  own,  out- 
side of  the  universities,  it  has  certainly  been 
the  feminine.  But  they  continue  to  exist 
side  by  side,  ever  falling  short  of  their 
highest  powers,  unless  mystically  mated, 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      13 

— judgment  erecting  its  edicts  into  arbi- 
trary standards  and  conventions,  enjoy- 
ment lost  in  the  mazes  of  its  sensuous 
indecision. 

Yet  if  we  examine  these  opposing  forms 
of  Criticism  in  our  own  age,  we  shall  find, 
I  think,  that  they  are  not  wholly  without 
a  common  ground  to  meet  on;  that,  in 
fact,  they  are  united  in  at  least  one  pre- 
possession which  they  do  not  share  with 
the  varying  forms  of  Criticism  in  any  of 
the  earlier  periods  of  its  history.  The 
Greeks  conceived  of  literature,  not  as  an  - 
inevitable  expression  of  creative  power,  but  . 
as  a  reasoned  "imitation"  or  re-shaping 
of  the  materials  of  life;  for  Aristotle,  poetry 
is  the  result  of  man's  imitative  instinct, 
and  differs  from  history  and  science  in 
that  it  deals  with  the  probable  or  possible 
rather  than  with  the  real.  The  Romans 
conceived  of  literature  as  a  noble  art, 
intended  (though  under  the  guise  of  pleas- 
ure) to  inspire  men  with  high  ideals  of 
life.     The  classicists  of  the  sixteenth  and 


14    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

seventeenth  centuries  accepted  this  view 
in  the  main;  for  them,  literature  was  a 
kind  of  exercise, — a  craft  acquired  by  study 
of  the  classics,  and  guided  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  nature  by  the  traditions  of  Greek 
and  Roman  art.  For  these  men  literature 
was  as  much  a  product  of  reason  as  science 
or  history.  The  eighteenth  century  com- 
plicated the  course  of  Criticism  by  the 
introduction  of  vague  and  novel  criteria, 
such  as  "imagination,"  "sentiment,"  and 
"taste,"  yet  it  was  only  in  part  able  to 
liberate  itself  from  the  older  tradition. 

But  with  the  Romantic  Movement  there 
developed  the  new  idea  which  coordinates 
all  Criticism  in  the  nineteenth  century. 
Very  early  in  the  century,  Mme.  de  Stael 
and  others  formulated  the  idea  that  lit- 
erature is  an  "expression  of  society." 
Victor  Cousin  founded  the  school  of  art 
for  art's  sake,  enunciating  "the  funda- 
mental rule,  that  expression  is  the  supreme 
law  of  art."  Later,  Sainte-Beuve  devel- 
oped and  illustrated  his  theory  that  lit- 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      15 

erature  is  an  expression  of  personality. 
Still  later,  under  the  influence  of  natural 
science,  Taine  took  a  hint  from  Hegel  and 
elaborated  the  idea  that  literature  is  an 
expression  of  race,  age,  and  environment. 
The  extreme  impressionists  prefer  to  think 
of  art  as  the  exquisite  expression  of  deli- 
cate and  fluctuating  sensations  or  impres- 
sions of  life.  But  for  all  these  critics  and 
theorists,  literature  is  an  expression  of 
something,  of  experience  or  emotion,  of 
the  external  or  internal,  of  the  man  him- 
self or  something  outside  the  man;  yet  it 
is  always  conceived  of  as  an  art  of  expres- 
sion. 

The  objective,  the  dogmatic,  the  impres- 
sionistic critics  of  our  day  may  set  for 
themselves  very  different  tasks,  but  the 
idea  of  expression  is  implicit  in  all  they 
write.  They  have,  as  it  were,  this  bond  of 
blood:  they  are  not  merely  man  and 
woman,  but  brother  and  sister;  and  their 
father,  or  grandfather,  was  Sainte-Beuve. 
The  bitter  but  acute  analysis  of  his  talent 


i6    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

which  Nietzsche  has  given  us  in  the 
Twilight  of  the  Idols  brings  out  very 
clearly  this  dual  side  of  his  seminal  power, 
the  feminine  sensitiveness  and  the  mascu- 
line detachment.  For  Nietzsche,  he  is 
"nothing  of  a  man;  he  wanders  about, 
delicate,  curious,  tired,  pumping  people, 
a  female  after  all,  with  a  woman's  revenge- 
fulness  and  a  woman's  sensuousness,  a 
critic  without  a  standard,  without  firm- 
ness, and  without  backbone."  Here  it  is 
the  impressionist  in  Sainte-Beuve  that 
arouses  the  German's  wrath.  But  in  the 
same  breath  we  find  Nietzsche  blaming  him 
for  "holding  up  objectivity  as  a  mask;" 
and  it  is  on  this  objective  side  that  Sainte- 
Beuve  becomes  the  source  of  all  those 
historical  and  psychological  forms  of  criti- 
cal study  which  have  influenced  the  aca- 
demic thought  of  our  day,  leading  insen- 
sibly, but  inevitably,  from  empirical  in- 
vestigation to  empirical  law.  The  pedigree 
of  the  two  schools  thereafter  is  not  difficult 
to  trace:  on  the  one  side,  from   Sainte- 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      17 

Beuve  through  Vart  pour  Vart  to  impres- 
sionism, and  on  the  other,  from  Sainte- 
Beuve  through  Taine  to  Brunetiere  and 
his  egregious  kin. 

FrencKcTiticism  has  been  leaning  heavily 
on  the  idea  of  expression  for  a  century  or 
more,  but  no  attempt  has  been  made  in 
France  to  understand  its  aesthetic  content, 
except  for  a  few  vague  echoes  of  German 
thought.  For  the  first  to  give  philosophic 
precision  to  the  theory  of  expression,  and 
to  found  a  method  of  Criticism  based  upon 
it,  were  the  Germans  of  the  age  that 
stretches  from  Herder  to  Hegel.  All  the 
forces  of  philosophical  thought  were  fo- 
cused on  this  central  concept,  while  the 
critics  enriched  themselves  from  out  this 
golden  store.  I  suppose  you  all  remember 
the  famous  passage  in  which  Carlyle  de- 
scribes the  achievement  of  German  criti- 
cism in  that  age.  "Criticism,"  says 
Carlyle,  "has  assumed  a  new  form  in 
Germany.  It  proceeds  on  other  principles 
and  proposes  to  itself  a  higher  aim.    The 


18     CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

main  question  is  not  now  a  question  con- 
cerning the  qualities  of  diction,  the  co- 
herence of  metaphors,  the  fitness  of  senti- 
ments, the  general  logical  truth  in  a  work 
of  art,  as  it  was  some  half  century  ago 
among  most  critics,  neither  is  it  a  question 
mainly  of  a  psychological  sort  to  be  an- 
swered by  discovering  and  delineating  the 
peculiar  nature  of  the  poet  from  his  poetry, 
as  is  usual  with  the  best  of  our  own  critics 
at  present;  but  it  is,  not  indeed  exclusively, 
but  inclusively,  of  its  two  other  questions, 
properly  and  ultimately  a  question  of  the 
essence  and  peculiar  life  of  the  poetry  it- 
self. .  .  .  The  problem  is  not  now  to  deter- 
mine by  what  mechanism  Addison  com- 
posed sentences  and  struck  out  similitudes, 
but  by  what  far  finer  and  more  mysterious 
mechanism  Shakespeare  organized  his  dra- 
mas and  gave  life  and  individuality  to  his 
Ariel  and  his  Hamlet.  Wherein  lies  that 
life;  how  have  they  attained  that  shape  and 
individuality?  Whence  comes  that  empy- 
rean fire  which  irradiates  their  whole  being, 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      19 

and  pierces,  at  least  in  starry  gleams,  like 
a  diviner  thing,  into  all  hearts?  Are 
these  dramas  of  his  not  veri-similar  only, 
but  true;  nay,  truer  than  reality  itself,  since 
the  essence  of  unmixed  reality  is  bodied 
forth  in  them  under  more  expressive  sim- 
iles? What  is  this  unity  of  pleasures;  and 
can  our  deeper  inspection  discern  it  to  be  in- 
divisible and  existing  by  necessity  because 
each  work  springs  as  it  were  from  the  gen- 
eral elements  of  thought  and  grows  up 
therefrom  into  form  and  expansion  by  its 
own  growth?  Not  only  who  was  the  poet 
and  how  did  he  compose,  but  what  and  how 
was  the  poem,  and  why  was  it  a  poem  and 
not  rhymed  eloquence,  creation  and  not 
figured  passion?  These  are  the  questions 
for  the  critic.  Criticism  stands  like  an  in- 
terpreter between  the  inspired  and  the  un- 
inspired; between  the  prophet  and  those 
who  hear  the  melody  of  his  words,  and  catch 
some  glimpse  of  their  material  meaning,  but 
understand  not  their  deeper  import." 
I  am  afraid  that  no  German  critic  wholly 


20    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

realized  this  ideal;  but  it  was  at  least  the 
achievement  of  the  Germans  that  they 
enunciated  the  doctrine,  even  if  they  did 
not  always  adequately  illustrate  it  in  prac- 
tice. It  was  they  who  first  realized  that 
art  has  performed  its  function  when  it  has 
expressed  itself;  it  was  they  who  first 
conceived  of  Criticism  as  the  study  of 
expression.  "There  is  a  destructive  and  a 
creative  or  constructive  criticism,"  said 
Goethe;  the  first  measures  and  tests  litera- 
ture according  to  mechanical  standards, 
the  second  answers  the  fundamental  ques- 
tions: "What  has  the  writer  proposed  to 
himself  to  do?  and  how  far  has  he  succeeded 
in  carrying  out  his  own  plan?"  Carlyle, 
in  his  essay  on  Goethe,  almost  uses 
Goethe's  own  words,  when  he  says  that  the 
critic's  first  and  foremost  duty  is  to  make 
plain  to  himself  "what  the  poet's  aim  really 
and  truly  was,  how  the  task  he  had  to  do 
stood  before  his  eye,  and  how  far,  with 
such  materials  as  were  afforded  him,  he  has 
fulfilled  it." 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM     21 

This  has  been  the  central  problem,  the 
guiding    star,    of    all    modern    criticism. 
From    Coleridge    to   Pater,    from    Sainte- 
Beuve   to   Lemaitre,   this   is   what  critics 
have  been   striving  for,  even  when  they 
have  not  succeeded;  yes,  even  when  they 
have  been  deceiving  themselves  into  think- 
ing that  they  were  striving  for  something 
else.    This  was  not  the  ideal  of  the  critics 
of  Aristotle's  day,  who,  like   so  many  of 
their  successors,   censured   a  work  of  art 
as  "irrational,  impossible,  morally  hurtful, 
self-contradictory,  or  contrary  to  technical 
correctness."      This     was     not    Boileau's 
standard  when  he  blamed  Tasso  for  the 
introduction  of  Christian  rather  than  pa- 
gan mythology  into  epic  poetry;  nor  Addi- 
son's, when  he  tested  Paradise  Lost  accord- 
ing  to   the   rules   of   Le   Bossu;   nor   Dr. 
Johnson's,  when  he  lamented  the  absence 
of  poetic  justice   in    King   Lear,   or  pro- 
nounced dogmatically  that  the  poet  shouH 
not   "number  the   streaks   of  the  tulip." 
What  has  the  poet  tried  to  do,  and  how 


22    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

has  he  fulfilled  his  intention?  What  is  he 
striving  to  express  and  how  has  he  ex- 
pressed it?  What  impression  does  his  work 
make  on  me,  and  how  can  I  best  express 
this  impressioil?  These  are  the  questions 
that  modern  critics  have  been  taught  to  ask 
when  face  to  face  with  the  work  of  a  poet. 
Only  one  caveat  must  be  borne  in  mind 
when  attemptkig  to  answer  them:  the 
poet's  intentiofis'  must  be  judged  at  the 
moment  of  the  creative  act,  as  mirrored  in 
the  work  of  art  itself,  and  not  by  the 
vague  ambitions  which  he  imagines  to  be 
his  real  intentions  -before  or  after  the 
creative  act  is  achieved. 

II 

The  theory  of  expression,  the  concept  of 
literature  as  an  art  of  expression,  is  the 
common  ground  on  which  critics  have  met 
for  a  century  or  more.  Yet  how  many 
absurdities,  how  many  complicated  sys- 
tems, how  many  confusions  have  been 
superimposed  on  this  fundamental  idea; 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      23 

and  how  slowly  has  its  full  significance 
become  the  possession  of  critics!  To  ac- 
cept the  naked  principle  is  to  play  havoc 
with  these  confusions  and  complications; 
and  no  one  has  seen  this  more  clearly,  or 
driven  home  its  inevitable  consequences 
with  more  intelligence  and  vigor,  than  an 
Italian  thinker  and  critic  of  our  own  day, 
Benedetto  Croce,  who  has  been  gaining 
ground  in  the  English-speaking  world  from 
the  day  when  Mr.  Balfour,  seven  or  eight 
years  ago,  gave  him  a  kind  of  official  in- 
troduction in  his  Romanes  Lecture.  But 
I  for  one  needed  no  introduction  to  his 
work;  under  his  banner  I  enrolled  myself 
long  ago,  and  here  re-enroll  myself  in  what 
I  now  say.  He  has  led  aesthetic  thought 
inevitably  from  the  concept  that  art  is 
expression  to  the  conclusion  that  all  ex- 
pression is  art.  Time  does  not  permit, 
nor  reason  ask,  that  we  should  follow  this 
argument  through  all  its  pros  and  cons. 
If  this  theory  of  expression  be  once  and  for 
all  accepted,  as  indeed  it  has  been  partly 


24    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

though  confusedly  accepted  by  all  modern 
critics,  the  ground  of  Criticism  is  cleared 
of  its  dead  lumber  and  its  weeds.  I  propose 
now  merely  to  point  out  this  dead  lumber 
and  these  weeds.  In  other  words,  we  shall 
see  to  what  conclusions  the  critical  thought 
and  practice  of  a  century  have  been  in- 
evitably converging,  and  what  elements 
of  the  old  Criticism  and  the  old  literary 
history  are  disappearing  from  the  new. 

In  the  first  place,  we  have  done  with  all 
the  old  Rules.  The  very  conception  of 
"rules"  harks  back  to  an  age  of  magic,  and 
reminds  the  modern  of  those  mysterious 
words  which  the  heroes  of  the  fairy-tales 
are  without  reason  forbidden  to  utter;  the 
rules  are  a  survival  of  the  savage  taboo. 
We  find  few  arbitrary  rules  in  Aristotle,] 
who  limited  himself  to  empirical  induc- 
tions from  the  experience  of  literature; 
but  they  appear  in  the  later  Greek  rhetori- 
cians; and  in  the  Romans,  empirical  in- 
duction has  been  hardened  into  dogma. 
Horace   lays   down   the   law   to   the   pro- 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM     25 

spective  playwright  in  this  manner:  "You 
must  never  have  more  than  three  actors 
on  the  stage  at  any  one  time;  you  must 
never  let  your  drama  exceed  five  acts." 
It  is  unnecessary  to  trace  the  history  of 
these  rules,  or  to  indicate  how  they  in- 
creased in  number,  how  they  were  arranged 
into  a  system  by  the  classicists  of  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  and 
how  they  burdened  the  creative  art  of  that 
period.  They  were  never  without  their 
enemies.  We  have  seen  how  Aretino  was 
pitted  against  Scaliger,  Saint-Evremond 
against  Boileau;  and  in  every  age  the  poets 
have  astounded  the  critics  by  transgressing 
rules  without  the  sacrifice  of  beauty;  but 
it  was  not  until  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century  that  the  Romanticists  banished 
them  from  the  province  of  Criticism.  The 
pedantry  of  our  own  day  has  borrowed 
"conventions"  from  history  and  "tech- 
nique" from  science  as  substitutes  for  the 
outworn  formulae  of  the  past;  but  these 
are  merely  new  names  for  the  old  mechan- 


26    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

ical  rules;  and  they  too  will  go,  when  Criti- 
cism clearly  recognizes  in  every  work  of 
art  a  spiritual  creation  governed  by  its  own 
law. 

We  have  done  with  the  genres,  or  literary 
kinds.  Their  history  is  inseparably  bound 
up  with  that  of  the  classical  rules.  Cer- 
tain works  of  literature  have  a  general 
resemblance  and  are  loosely  classed  to- 
gether (for  the  sake  of  convenience)  as 
lyric,  comedy,  tragedy,  epic,  pastoral,  and 
the  like;  the  classicists  made  of  each  of 
these  divisions  a  fixed  norm  governed  by 
inviolable  laws.  The  separation  of  the 
genres  was  a  consequence  of  this  law  of 
classicism:  comedy  should  not  be  mingled 
with  tragedy,  nor  epic  with  lyric.  But  no 
sooner  was  the  law  enunciated  than  it  was 
broken  by  an  artist  impatient  or  ignorant 
of  its  restraints,  and  the  critics  have  been 
obliged  to  explain  away  these  violations 
of  their  laws,  or  gradually  to  change  the 
laws  themselves.  But  if  art  is  organic 
expression,  and  every  work  of  art  is  to  be 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      27 

interrogated  with  the  question,  "What  has 
it  expressed,  and  how  completely?"  there 
is  no  place  for  the  question  whether  it  has 
conformed  to  some  convenient  classifica- 
tion of  critics  or  to  some  law  derived  from 
this  classification.  The  lyric,  the  pastoral, 
the  epic,  are  abstractions  without  concrete 
reality  in  the  world  of  art.  Poets  do  not 
really  write  epics,  pastorals,  lyrics,  how- 
ever much  they  may  be  deceived  by 
these  false  abstractions;  they  express 
themselves,  and  this  expression  is  their 
only  form.  There  are  not,  therefore,  only 
three,  or  ten,  or  a  hundred  literary  kinds; 
there  are  as  many  kinds  as  there  are  in- 
dividual poets.  But  it  is  in  the  field  of 
literary  history  that  this  error  is  most 
obvious.  Shakespeare  wrote  King  Lear, 
Fenus  and  Adonis,  and  a  sequence  of  son- 
nets. What  becomes  of  Shakespeare,  the 
creative  artist,  when  these  three  works 
are  separated  from  one  another  by  the 
historian  of  poetry;  when  they  lose  their 
connection  with  his  single  creative  soul. 


28     CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

and  are  classified  with  other  works  with 
which  they  have  only  a  loose  and  vague 
relation?  To  slice  up  the  history  of  Eng- 
lish literature  into  compartments  marked 
comedy,  tragedy,  lyric,  and  the  like,  is 
to  be  guilty  of  a  complete  misunderstand- 
ing of  the  meaning' of  Criticism;  and  lit- 
erary history  becomes  a  logical  absurdity 
when  its  data  are  not  organically  related 
but  cut  up  into  sections,  and  placed  in 
such  compartments  as  these.  Only  in  one 
sense  has  any  of  these  terms  any  profound 
significance,  and  that  is  the  use  of  the  word 
"lyric"  to  represent  the  free  expressiveness 
of  art.  All  art  is  lyrical, — the  Divine  Com- 
edy, King  Lear,  Rodin's  "Thinker,"  the 
Parthenon,  a  Corot  landscape,  a  Bach 
fugue,  or  Isadora  Duncan's  dancing,  as 
much  as  the  songs  of  Heine  or  Shelley. 

We  have  done  with  the  comic,  the  tragic, 
the  sublime,  and  an  army  of  vague  ab- 
stractions of  their  kind.  These  have  grown 
out  of  the  generalizations  of  the  Alexan- 
drian critics,  acquiring  a  new  lease  of  life 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      29 

in  the  eighteenth  century.  Gray  and  his 
friend  West  corresponded  with  each  other 
on  the  subject  of  the  sublime;  later,  Schiller 
distinguished  between  the  naive  and  the 
sentimental;  Jean  Paul  defined  humor, 
and  Hegel  defined  the  tragic.  If  these 
terms  represent  the  content  of  art,  they 
may  be  relegated  to  the  same  category  as 
joy,  hate,  sorrow,  enthusiasm;  and  we 
should  speak  of  the  comic  in  the  same 
general  way  in  which  we  might  speak  of 
the  expression  of  joy  in  a  poem.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  these  terms  represent 
abstract  classifications  of  poetry,  their  use 
in  criticism  sins  against  the  very  nature  of 
art.  i  Every  poet  re-expresses  the  universe 
in  his  own  way,  and  every  poem  is  a  new 
and  independent  expressionT]  The  tragic 
does  not  exist  for  Criticism,  but  only  ^Es- 
chylus  and  Calderon,  Shakespeare  and 
Racine.  There  is  no  objection  to  the  use 
of  the  word  tragic  as  a  convenient  label  for 
somewhat  similar  poems,  but  to  find  laws 
for  the  tragic  and  to  test  creative  artists 


30    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

by  such  laws  as  these  is  simply  to  give  a 
more  abstract  form  to  the  outworn  classical 
conception  of  dramatic  rules. 

We  have  done  with  the  theory  of  style, 
with  metaphor,  simile,  and  all  the  para- 
phernalia of  Graeco-Roman  rhetoric. 
These  owe  their  existence  to  the  assump- 
tion that  style  is  separate  from  expres- 
sion, that  it  is  something  which  may  be 
added  or  subtracted  at  will  from  the  work 
of  art,  a  flourish  of  the  pen,  an  external 
embellishment,  instead  of  the  poet's  indi- 
1  vidual  vision  of  reality,  "  the  music  of  his 
-whole  manner  of  being."  But  we  know 
that  art  is  expression,  that  it  is  complete  in 
itself,  that  to  alter  it  is  to  create  another 
expression  and  therefore  to  create  another 
work  of  art.  If  the  poet,  for  example,  says 
of  springtime  that  "  'Tis  now  the  blood  runs 
gold,"  he  has  not  employed  a  substitute  for 
something  else,  such  as  "the  blood  tingles 
in  our  veins;"  he  has  expressed  his  thought 
in  its  completeness,  and  there  is  no  equiva- 
lent for  his  expression  except  itself. 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      31 

"Each  perfect  in  its  place;  and  each  content 
With  that  perfection  which  its  being  meant." 

Such  expressions  are  still  called  metaphors 
in  the  text-books;  but  metaphor,  simile, 
and  all  the  old  terms  of  classical  rhetoric 
are  signs  of  the  zodiac,  magical  incanta- 
tions, astrological  formulae,  interesting  only 
to  antiquarian  curiosity.  To  Montaigne 
they  suggested  "the  prattle  of  chamber- 
maids;" to  me  they  suggest  rather  the 
drone  and  singsong  of  many  school- 
mistresses. We  still  hear  talk  of  the 
"grand  style,"  and  essays  on  style  con- 
tinue to  be  written,  like  the  old  "arts  of 
poetry"  of  two  centuries  ago.  But  the 
theory  of  styles  has  no  longer  a  real  place 
in  modern  thought;  we  have  learned  that 
it  is  no  less  impossible  to  study  style  as 
separate  from  the  work  of  art  than  to 
study  the  comic  as  separate  from  the  work 
of  the  comic  artist. 

We  have  done  with  all  moral  judgment 
of  literature.  Horace  said  that  pleasure 
and  profit  are  the  end  of  art,  and  for  many 


32     CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

centuries  the  critics  quarreled  over  the 
terms  "pleasure"  and  "profit."  Some 
said  that  poetry  was  meant  to  instruct; 
some,  merely  to  please;  some,  to  do  both. 
Romantic  criticism  first  enunciated  the 
principle  that  art  has  no  aim  except  ex- 
pression; that  its  aim  is  complete  when 
expression  is  complete;  that  "beauty  is  its 
own  excuse  for  being."  It  is  not  the  func- 
tion of  poetry  to  further  any  moral  or  so- 
cial cause,  any  more  than  it  is  the  function 
of  bridge-building  to  further  the  cause  of 
Esperanto.  If  the  achievement  of  the 
poet  be  to  express  any  material  he  may 
select,  and  to  express  it  with  a  complete- 
ness that  we  recognize  as  perfection, 
obviously  morals  can  play  no  part  in  the 
judgment  which  Criticism  may  form  of  his 
work.  To  say  that  poetry  is  moral  or 
immoral  is  as  meaningless  as  to  say  that  an 
equilateral  triangle  is  moral  and  an  isos- 
celes triangle  immoral,  or  to  speak  of  the 
immorality  of  a  musical  chord  or  a  Gothic 
arch.     It  is  onlv  conceivable  in  a  world 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      33 

In  which  dinner  table  conversation  runs 
after  this  fashion:  "This  cauliflower  would 
be  good  if  it  had  only  been  prepared  in 
accordance  with  international  law."  "Do 
you  know  why  my  cook's  pastry  is  so 
good?  Because  he  has  never  told  a  lie 
or  seduced  a  woman."  We  do  not  con- 
cern ourselves  with  morals  when  we  test 
the  engineer's  bridge  or  the  scientist's 
researches;  indeed  we  go  farther,  and  say 
that  it  is  the  moral  duty  of  the  scientist  to 
disregard  any  theory  of  morals  in  his 
search  for  truth.  Beauty's  world  is  re- 
mote from  both  these  standards;  she  aims  // 
neither  at  morals  nor  at  truth.  Her 
imaginary  creations,  by  definition,  make 
no  pretence  to  reality,  and  cannot  be 
judged  by  reality's  tests.  The  poet's  only 
moral  duty,  as  a  poet,  is  to  be  true  to  his 
art,  and  to  express  his  vision  of  reality  as 
well  as  he  can.  If  the  ideals  enunciated  by 
poets  are  not  those  which  we  admire  most, 
we  must  blame  not  the  poets  but  ourselves: 
in  the  world  where  morals  count  we  have 


34    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

failed  to  give  them  the  proper  material 
out  of  which  to  rear  a  nobler  edifice.  No 
critic  of  authority  now  tests  literature  by 
the  standards  of  ethics. 

We  have  done  with  the  confusion  be- 
tween the  drama  and  the  theatre  which  has 
permeated  dramatic  criticism  for  over  half 
a  century.  The  theory  that  the  drama 
is  not  a  creative  art,  but  a  mere  prod- 
uct of  the  physical  exigencies  of  the 
theatre,  is  as  old  as  the  sixteenth  century. 
An  Italian  scholar  of  that  age  was  the 
first  to  maintain  that  plays  are  intended 
to  be  acted  on  a  stage,  under  certain  re- 
stricted physical  conditions,  and  before  a 
large  and  heterogeneous  crowd;  dramatic 
performance  has  developed  out  of  these 
conditions,  and  the  test  of  its  excellence  is 
therefore  the  pleasure  it  gives  to  the  mixed 
audience  that  supports  it.  This  idea  was 
taken  hold  of  by  some  of  the  German  ro- 
manticists, for  the  purpose  of  justifying  the 
Shakespearean  drama  in  its  apparent 
divergence    from    the    classical    "rules." 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      35 

Shakespeare  cannot  be  judged  by  the  rules 
of  the  Greek  theatre  (so  ran  their  argu- 
ment), for  the  drama  Is  an  inevitable 
product  of  theatrical  conditions;  these 
conditions  in  Elizabethan  England  were 
not  the  same  as  those  of  Periclean  Athens; 
and  it  is  therefore  absurd  to  judge  Shake- 
speare's practice  by  that  of  Sophocles. 
Here  at  least  the  idea  helped  to  bring 
Shakespeare  home  to  many  new  hearts  by 
ridding  the  age  of  mistaken  prejudices,  and 
served  a  useful  purpose,  as  a  specious  argu- 
ment may  persuade  men  to  contribute  to  a 
noble  work,  or  a  mad  fanatic  may  rid  the' 
world  of  a  tyrant.  But  with  this  achieve- 
ment its  usefulness  but  not  its  life  was 
ended.  It  has  been  developed  into  a  sys- 
tem, and  become  a  dogma  of  dramatic 
critics;  it  is  our  contemporary  equivalent 
for  the  ** rules"  of  seventeenth-century 
pedantry.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  dra- 
matic artist  is  to  be  judged  by  no  other 
standard  than  that  applied  to  any  other 
creative  artist:  what  has  he  tried  to  ex- 


36    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

press,  and  how  has  he  expressed  it?  It  is 
true  that  the  theatre  is  not  only  an  art  but 
a  business,  and  the  so-called  "success"  of  a 
play  is  of  vital  interest  to  the  theatre  in  so 
far  as  it  is  a  commercial  undertaking. 
"  The  success  may  justify  the  playwright," 
said  an  old  French  critic,  "  but  it  may 
not  be  so  easy  to  justify  the  success."  The 
test  of  "success"  is  an  economic  test,  and 
concerns  not  art  or  the  criticism  of  art, 
but  political  economy.  Valuable  contribu- 
tions to  economic  and  social  history  have 
been  made  by  students  who  have  investi- 
gated the  changing  conditions  of  the 
theatre  and  the  vicissitudes  of  taste  on  the 
part  of  theatrical  audiences;  but  these  have 
the  same  relation  to  Criticism,  and  to  the 
drama  as  an  art,  that  a  history  of  the  pub- 
lisher's trade  and  its  influence  on  the 
personal  fortunes  of  poets  would  bear  to 
the  history  of  poetry. 

We  have  done  with  technique  as  separate 
from  art.  It  has  been  pointed  out  that 
style  cannot  be  disassociated  from  art;  and 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      37 

the  false  air  of  science  which  the  term 
"technique"  seems  to  possess  should  not 
blind  us  to  the  fact  that  it  too  involves  the 
same  error.  "Technique  is  really  per- 
sonality; that  is  the  reason  why  the  artist 
cannot  teach  it,  why  the  pupil  cannot 
learn  it,  and  why  the  aesthetic  critic  can 
understand  it,"  says  Oscar  Wilde,  in  a 
dialogue  on  "The  Critic  as  Artist,"  which, 
amid  much  perversity  and  paradox,  is 
illumined  by  many  flashes  of  strange  in- 
sight. The  technique  of  poetry  cannot  be 
separated  from  its  inner  nature.  Versifica- 
tion cannot  be  studied  by  itself,  except 
loosely  and  for  convenience;  it  remains 
always  an  inherent  quality  of  the  single 
poem.  No  two  poets  ever  write  in  the 
same  metre.    Milton's  line:  — 

"These  my  sky-robes  spun  out  of  Iris'  woof" 

is  called  an  iambic  pentameter;  but  it  is 
not  true  that  artistically  it  has  something 
in  common  with  every  other  line  possessing 
the  same  succession  of  syllables  and  ac- 

5  0  i)  4  S 


38     CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

cents;  in  this  sense  it  is  not  an  iambic 
pentameter;  it  is  only  one  thing;  it  is  the 
line:  — • 

"These  my  sky-robes  spun  out  of  Iris'  woof." 

We  have  done  with  the  history  and  crit- 
icism of  poetic  themes.  It  is  possible  to 
speak  loosely  of  the  handling  of  such  a 
theme  as  Prometheus  by  ^Eschylus  and  by 
Shelley,  of  the  story  of  Francesca  da 
Rimini,  by  Dante,  Stephen  Phillips,  and 
D'Annunzio,  or  the  story  of  King  Arthur 
by  Malory  and  Tennyson;  but  strictly 
speaking,  they  are  not  employing  the  same 
theme  at  all.  Each  artist  is  expressing  a 
certain  material  and  labeling  it  with  an  his- 
toric name.  For  Shelley  Prometheus  is 
only  a  label;  he  is  expressing  his  artistic 
conception  of  life,  not  the  history  of  a  Greek 
Titan.  It  is  the  vital  flame  he  has  breathed 
into  his  work  that  makes  it  what  it  is,  and 
with  this  vital  flame  (and  not  with  labels) 
the  critic  should  concern  himself  in  the 
works^of  poets.    The  same  answer  must  be 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      39 

given  to  those  critics  who  insist  on  the  use 
of  contemporary  material  in  poetry,  and 
praise  the  poets  whose  subjects  are  drawn 
from  the  life  of  our  own  time.  But  even  if 
it  were  possible  for  critics  to  determine  in 
advance  the  subject-matter  of  poetry  or  to 
impose  subjects  on  poets,  how  can  a  poet 
deal  with  anything  but  contemporary  ma- 
terial? How  can  a  twentieth-century  poet, 
even  when  he  imagines  that  he  is  concerned 
with  Greek  or  Egyptian  life,  deal  with  any 
subject  but  the  life  of  his  own  time,  except 
in  the  most  external  and  superficial  detail: 
Cynics  have  said  since  the  first  outpourings 
of  men's  hearts,  "There  is  nothing  new 
in  art;  there  are  no  new  subjects."  But 
the  very  reverse  is  true.  There  arc  no  old 
subjects;  every  subject  is  new  as  soon  as  it 
has  been  transformed  by  the  imagination 
of  the  poet. 

We  have  done  with  the  race,  the  time, 
the  environment  of  a  poet's  work  as  an  ele- 
ment in  Criticism.  To  study  these  phases 
of  a  work  of  art  is  to  treat  it  as  an  historic 


40    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

or  social  document,  and  the  result  is  a  con- 
tribution to  tiie  history  of  culture  or 
civilization,  with  only  a  subsidiary  interest 
for  the  history  of  art,  "Granted  the  times, 
the  environment,  the  race,  the  passions  of 
the  poet,  what  has  he  done  with  his  materi- 
als, how  has  he  converted  poetry  out  of  real- 
ity?" To  answer  this  question  of  the 
Italian  De  Sanctis  as  it  refers  to  each  single 
work  of  art  is  to  perform  what  is  truly  the 
critic's  vital  function;  this  is  to  interpret 
"expression"  in  its  rightful  sense,  and  to 
liberate  aesthetic  Criticism  from  the  vassal- 
age to  Kulturgeschichte  imposed  on  it  by  the 
school  of  Taine. 

We  have  done  with  the  "evolution"  of 
literature.  The  concept  of  progress  was 
first  applied  to  literature  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  but  at  the  very  outset 
Pascal  pointed  out  that  a  distinction  must 
here  be  made  between  science  and  art; 
that  science  advances  by  accumulation  of 
knowledge,  while  the  changes  of  art  cannot 
be  reduced  to  any  theory  of  progress.    As  a 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      41 

matter  of  fact,  the  theory  involves  the 
ranking  of  poets  according  to  some  ar- 
bitrary conception  of  their  value;  and  the 
ranking  of  writers  in  order  of  merit  has 
become  obsolete,  except  in  the  *' hundred 
best  books"  of  the  last  decade  and  the 
"five-foot  shelves"  of  yesterday.  The 
later  nineteenth  century  gave  a  new  air  of 
verisimilitude  to  this  old  theory  by  bor- 
rowing the  term  "evolution"  from  science; 
but  this  too  involves  a  fundamental  mis- 
conception of  the  free  and  original  move- 
ment of  art.  A  similar  misconception  is 
involved  in  the  study  of  the  "origins"  of 
art;  for  art  has  no  origin  separate  from 
man's  life. 

"In  climes  beyond  the  solar  road, 

Where  shaggy  forms  o'er  ice-built  mountains 

roam, 
The  Muse  has  broke  the  twilight-gloom"; 

but  though  she  wore  savage  raiment,  she 
was  no  less  the  Muse.  Art  is  simple  at 
times,  complex  at  others,  but  it  is  always 
art.    The  simple  art  of  early  times  may  be 


42    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

studied  with  profit;  but  the  researches  of 
anthropology  have  no  vital  significance  for 
Criticism,  unless  the  anthropologist  studies 
the  simplest  forms  of  art  in  the  same  spirit 
as  its  highest;  that  is,  unless  the  anthro- 
pologist is  an  aesthetic  critic. 

Finally,  we  have  done  with  the  old  rup- 
ture between  genius  and  taste.  When 
Criticism  first  propounded  as  its  real  con- 
cern the  oft-repeated  question:  "What  has 
the  poet  tried  to  express  and  how  has  he 
expressed  it.'*"  Criticism  prescribed  for 
itself  the  only  possible  method.  How  can 
the  critic  answer  this  question  without  be- 
coming (if  only  for  a  moment  of  supreme 
power)  at  one  with  the  creator.''  That  is  to 
say,  taste  must  reproduce  the  work  of  art 
within  itself  in  order  to  understand  and 
judge  it;  and  at  that  moment  aesthetic 
judgment  becomes  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  creative  art  itself.  The  identity  of 
genius  and  taste  is  the  final  achievement 
of  modern  thought  on  the  subject  of  art, 
and  it  means  that  fundamentally,  in  their 


THE    NEW    CRITICISM      43 

most  significant  moments,  the  creative 
and  the  critical  instincts  are  one  and  the 
same.  From  Goethe  to  Carlyle,  from 
Carlyle  to  Arnold,  from  Arnold  to  Symons, 
there  has  been  much  talk  of  the  "cre- 
ative function"  of  Criticism.  For  each 
of  these  men  the  phrase  held  a  diflFer- 
cnt  content;  for  Arnold  it  meant  merely 
that  Criticism  creates  the  intellectual 
atmosphere  of  the  age,  —  a  social  function 
of  high  importance,  perhaps,  yet  wholly 
independent  of  aesthetic  significance.  But 
the  ultimate  truth  toward  which  these 
men  were  tending  was  more  radical  than 
that,  and  plays  havoc  with  all  the  old 
platitudes  about  the  sterility  of  taste. 
Criticism  at  last  can  free  itself  of  its  age- 
long self-contempt,  now  that  it  may  realize 
that  aesthetic  judgment  and  artistic  crea-  ,/ 
tion  are  instinct  with  the  same  vital  life. 
This  identity  does  not  sum  up  the 
whole  life  of  the  complex  and  difficult 
art  of  Criticism,  but  without  it,  Criticism 
would  really  be  impossible.     "Genius  is  to 


44 


CREATIVE    CRITICISM 


aesthetics  what  the  ego  is  to  philosophy, 
the  only  supreme  and  absolute  reality," 
said  Schelling;  and  without  subduing  the 
mind  to  this  transcendental  system,  it 
remains  true  that  what  must  always  be 
inexplicable  to  mere  reflection  is  just  what 
gives  power  to  poetry;  that  intellectual 
curiosity  may  amuse  itself  by  asking  its 
little  questions  of  the  silent  sons  of  light, 
but  they  vouchsafe  no  answer  to  art's 
pale  shadow,  thought;  the  gods  are  kind 
if  they  give  up  their  secret  in  another  work 
of  art,  the  art  of  Criticism,  that  serves  as 
some  sort  of  mirror  to  the  art  of  literature, 
only  because  in  their  flashes  of  insight  taste 
and  genius  are  one. 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM 
AND    THE    THEATRE 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM 
AND    THE    THEATRE 

In  one  of  the  largest  American  Universi- 
ties there  is  a  room  filled  with  theatrical 
bric-a-brac  which  is  called  "The  Dramatic 
Museum."  Actors,  theatrical  managers, 
antiquarians,  and  millionaires  have  added 
to  a  collection  begun  by  the  University  au- 
thorities; and  the  museum  now  contains 
reproductions  of  the  great  theatres  of  the 
ancient  and  modern  world,  masks,  prompt- 
books, playbills,  and  all  the  other  acces- 
sories of  the  stage.  The  room  may  or  may 
not  contain  collections  of  plays  (for  I  have 
never  visited  it);  but  in  any  event,  they 
are  subsidiary  to  the  main  object  of  the 
directors,  which  is  to  illustrate  the  chang- 
ing conditions  of  the  theatres  of  the  world 
as  an  essential  introduction  to  the  study  of 
the  drama. 

Now,  there  can  be  no  legitimate  objec- 


48     CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

tion  to  the  study  of  theatrical  antiquities 
as  a  thing  in  itself.  Human  curiosity  finds 
a  natural  satisfaction  in  searching  the  past 
for  every  manifestation  of  man's  activity 
and  ingenuity;  and  who  shall  say  that  the 
antiquities  of  the  theatre,  that  house 
of  a  thousand  wonders,  may  not  be 
studied  with  interest  (and  even  with 
intelligence)  by  those  who  are  especially 
attracted  by  the  stage  and  its  history? 
Manuscripts,  parchments,  missals,  bind- 
ings, and  typography  are  a  legitimate 
object  of  study  for  both  those  who  are 
interested  and  those  who  are  not  interested 
in  the  contents  of  books;  and  the  history 
of  the  theatre  may  furnish  amusement  both 
to  those  who  love  the  drama  and  to  those 
who  care  nothing  for  what  the  drama  really 
has  to  offer  the  souls  of  men.  The  pro- 
fessional printer  may  profitably  spend  his 
spare  hours  in  studying  the  history  of 
printing,  without  concerning  himself  with 
the  literature  which  the  printed  page  gave 
to  the  world;  the  actor  may  amuse  himself 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    49 

intelligently  by  ransacking  stage  memoirs 
or  studying  theatrical  antiquities,  without 
adding    to    his    knowledge    of    dramatic 
poetry;    and    who    shall    say    them    nay? 
Both  printer  and  actor  become  students  of 
Kulturgeschichie    in    the    process,    though, 
like   Monsieur   Jourdain,    they    may    not 
know  it;  they  are  both  exploring  outlying 
regions    in    the    field    of    human    culture. 
But  the  fact  is  that  the  collection  in  the 
American  University  has  not  been  brought 
together  for  this  reason.    It  has  a  far  more 
pretentious  purpose  than  this.    It  is  called 
a   "dramatic"    (not  merely   a   theatrical) 
museum,    and    those    responsible    for    its 
existence    have    brought    together    their 
interesting  collection  because  they  believe 
that   these    theatrical    antiquities    are   an 
essential  instrument  of  dramatic  criticism. 
They  believe  that  dramatic  literature  can- 
not  be    intelligently    studied    without    an 
understanding  of  all  that  has  gone  on  in 
the  playhouses  of  the  world  from  the  very 
beginnings  of  the  drama.     The  shape  of 


50    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

the  stage,  the  scenery,  the  audience  and 
its  characteristics,  the  lighting  of  the 
house,  and  many  other  things  must  be 
considered  and  understood  before  the  art 
of  the  drama  can  be  understood  and 
appreciated.  This  raises  a  serious  ques- 
tion of  literary  theory.  For  while  we  were 
willing  to  follow  the  printer's  studies  in 
the  history  of  typography,  with  real  inter- 
est, and  without  a  careful  weighing  of  the 
relative  merits  of  printing  and  other  arts 
and  crafts,  the  case  would  be  quite  differ- 
ent if  he  insisted  that  we  cannot  under- 
stand the  history  of  literature  without 
studying  the  history  of  printing;  and  we 
should  be  especially  inclined  to  examine 
the  merits  of  his  contention  if  we  found 
that  it  was  accepted  without  question  by  a 
considerable  number  of  literary  critics. 
The  thesis  of  the  directors  of  the  "dra- 
matic museum"  is  a  popular  one  in  this 
age;  actors,  playwrights,  and  dramatic 
critics  alike  agree  with  them.  What  is 
the  history  of  this  thesis,  and  what  are  its 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM     51 

merits?  What  authority  in  the  past  has 
this  theory  that  the  criticism  of  dramatic 
literature  must  rest  on  a  knowledge  of  the 
conditions  of  the  theatre,  and  how  weighty 
and  convincing  does  this  authority  appear? 
These  are  the  questions  which  this  essay 
attempts  to  answer. 

It  is  obvious  at  the  outset  that  we  shall 
not  have  to  concern  ourselves  with  the  gen- 
eral effect  of  acting  or  representation  on  a 
dramatic  work.  That  professional  actors 
may  interpret  plays  with  verve  and  power 
and  insight  beyond  the  skill  of  men  un- 
accustomed to  visualize  or  portray  human 
passion  and  human  action;  that  the  actor's 
art  may  in  a  sense  vitalize  the  written  word 
and  give  it  a  new  magic;  that  the  theatre 
may  add  a  new  and  wonderful  sensuous 
beauty  to  the  imagination  of  the  poet, — 
these  are  statements  which  it  is  wholly 
unnecessary  to  contest.  So  when  Voltaire, 
dedicating  his  tragedy  of  Zulime  to  a  popu- 
lar actress  of  his  time,  tells  her  that  "with- 
out great  actors,  a  play  is  without  life; 


52    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

it  is  you  who  give  it  its  soul;  tragedy  is 
intended  to  be  acted  even  more  than  to  be 
read,"  he  is  stating  an  opinion  which  is 
beyond  the  scope  of  this  discussion.  It 
would  be  a  simple  matter  to  collect,  from 
dedications  and  prologues  and  prefaces, 
from  Marston's  Malcontent  and  Webster's 
Devil's  Law  Case  to  the  published  plays 
of  our  own  day,  the  obiter  dicta  of  practical 
playwrights  who  have  expressed  themselves 
as  dissatisfied  with  the  printed  page  as 
the  sole  or  the  final  medium  of  expression 
for  dramatic  writing.  We  need  not  be 
greatly  impressed  by  these  casual  and  un- 
critical utterances,  which  tell  us  nothing 
of  the  creative  act  that  produced  the  work 
of  art,  but  merely  echo  the  ambitions 
which  the  artist  cherishes  for  the  children 
of  his  brain  after  they  are  born.  Indeed, 
they  do  not  differ  fundamentally  from 
the  whim  of  a  poet  who  might  maintain 
that  his  verses  could  not  be  thoroughly 
appreciated  unless  they  were  printed  on 
vellum,  in  beautiful  type,  and  with  wide 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    53 

margins.  But  utterances  of  this  kind  do 
not  concern  us  here;  for  the  idea  in  which 
for  the  moment  we  have  a  special  interest 
is  that  the  theatre  and  the  drama  are  not 
two  distinct  things,  but  only  one;  that  the 
actor  and  the  theatre  do  not  merely  exter- 
nalize the  drama,  or  interpret  it,  or 
heighten  its  effect,  but  that  they  are  the 
drama;  that  the  drama,  in  a  word,  is  not 
so  much  a  creative  art  born  in  the  brain 
of  the  playwright  as  an  historic  product 
shaped  by  theatres  and  actors,  and  there- 
fore not  to  be  understood  or  studied  with- 
out reference  to  them. 

Even  in  this  form  we  find  the  problem 
propounded  at  the  very  beginnings  of 
dramatic  criticism.  Aristotle,  in  the  fourth 
chapter  of  the  Poetics,  makes  a  distinction 
between  the  consideration  of  tragedy  in 
itself  and  its  consideration  with  reference 
to  theatrical  representation;  but  the  text 
of  the  passage  is  so  corrupt  and  confus- 
ing that  it  is  hardly  possible  to  found  a 
theory,  or  even  shape  a  clear  antithesis, 


54    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

on  the  basis  of  this  utterance.  In  several 
other  passages,  however,  he  has  clearly 
enough  stated  his  point  of  view.  Tragedy, 
he  tells  us,  has  six  parts,  plot,  character, 
diction,  thought,  song,  and  scenery.  By 
the  last  is  meant  the  spectacle  presented 
by  the  play  upon  the  stage,  the  scenery, 
the  mise  en  scene,  or  perhaps  merely  the 
actors  in  their  tragic  costume;  but  at 
all  events  the  purely  theatrical  side  of  a 
drama.    This,  he  says  in  the  sixth  chapter, 

"has  an  emotional  attraction  of  its  own,  but  of 
all  the  parts  it  is  the  least  artistic  and  con- 
nected least  with  the  art  of  poetry.  For  the 
power  of  tragedy,  we  may  be  sure,  is  felt  even 
apart  from  representation  and  actors.  Be- 
sides, the  production  of  spectacular  effects 
depends  more  on  the  art  of  the  stage  machinist 
than  on  that  of  the  poet." 

This  statement  is  repeated  and  re-enforced 
with  argument  throughout  the  Poetics: — 
in  the  seventh  chapter,  where  we  are  told 
that  the  length  of  a  play  must  be  de- 
termined by  an  inner  need,  for 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM 


:):) 


"the  limit  of  length  in  relation  to  dramatic 
competition  and  sensuous  presentment  is  no 
part  of  artistic  theory"; 

in  the  fourteenth  chapter,  where  there  is  a 
contrast  between  the  superior  poet  who 
arouses  tragic  pity  and  fear  by  means  of 
the  inner  structure  of  the  piece,  and  the 
inferior  poet  who  does  so  by  means  of  the 
external  spectacle  of  the  theatre: 

"for  the  plot  ought  to  be  so  constructed  that, 
even  without  the  aid  of  the  eye,  he  who  hears 
the  tale  told  will  thrill  with  horror  and  melt 
with  pity  at  what  takes  place"; 

and  finally  in  the  twenty-sixth  chapter, 
where  Aristotle  sharply  distinguishes  be- 
tween the  poetic  and  histrionic  arts,  and 
tells  us  that 

"tragedy,  like  epic  poetry,  produces  its  true 
eflFect  even  without  action;  it  reveals  its  power 
by  mere  reading." 

Casual  references  to  the  part  played  by 
actors  and  the  theatre  in  the  make-up  of  a 


56    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

play  may  mislead  moderns  into  thinking 
that  Aristotle  is  not  wholly  consistent  in 
this  matter.  But  the  fact  is  that  he  cannot 
help  thinking  of  plays  in  connection  with 
their  theatrical  representation,  any  more 
than  most  of  us  can  think  of  men  and 
women  without  clothes.  They  belong 
together  by  long  habit  and  use;  they  help 
each  other  to  be  what  we  commonly  think 
them.  But  he  does  not  make  them  identi- 
cal or  mutually  inclusive.  A  play  is  a  crea- 
tive work  of  the  imagination,  and  must  be 
considered  as  such  always,  and  as  such  only. 
From  the  later  Italian  Renaissance  to  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  Poetics 
found  scores,  indeed  hundreds,  of  transla- 
tors and  commentators  throughout  Eu- 
rope; and  Aristotle's  position  was  tamely 
accepted  by  virtually  every  one  of  them. 
That  this  should  be  so  in  the  Italy  of  the 
sixteenth  century  need  excite  no  wonder, 
since  the  traditions  of  the  theatre  were 
still  to  be  created  for  modern  Europe.  But 
in  the  next  century  we  find  even  Corneille, 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM     57 

in  his  three  Discours,  dismissing  the  whole 
subject  of  stage  decoration  and  scenery, 
because  Aristotle  said  they  do  not  properly 
concern  the  poet;  and  this  despite  his 
own  complaint  that  most  dramatic  critics 
have  discussed  the  drama  as  philosophers 
and  grammarians  wholly  lacking  in  all 
experience  of  the  theatre.  So  Dryden, 
true  to  the  ideals  of  his  master  Corneille, 
tells  us  that  it  is  his  ambition  as  a  play- 
wright to  be  read:  "that,  I  am  sure,  is  the 
more  lasting  and  the  nobler  design." 
So  the  great  French  scholar,  Dacier, 
at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
admits  that  while  stage  decoration  adds  to 
the  beauty  of  a  play,  it  makes  the  piece 
in  itself  neither  better  nor  worse;  and  yet 
he  feels  that  it  is  valuable  for  the  poet  to 
understand  the  theatre,  in  order  that  he 
may  know  whether  his  play  is  well  acted 
and  whether  the  scenery  is  proper  to  the 
piece.  So  in  the  middle  of  the  next  cen- 
tury, Voltaire,  in  the  notes  to  the  tragedy 
of  Olympie,  says: 


58     CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

"What  has  the  stage  decoration  to  do  with  the 
merit  of  a  poem?  If  the  success  depends  on 
what  strikes  the  eyes,  we  might  as  well  have 
moving  pictures!" 

And  so  at  the  end  of  the  same  century,  the 
poet  laureate  Pye,  if  we  may  dare  to  dis- 
inter his  work  in  the  face  of  Byron's  and 
the  world's  contempt,  says  in  his  com- 
mentary on  the  Poetics  : 

"There  are  few  good  tragedies  in  which  the 
effect  is  not  in  general  at  least  as  forcible  in  the 
closet  as  on  the  stage,  even  in  the  modern 
theatre.  In  the  strongly  impassioned  parts, 
where  every  other  consideration  of  effect  is  lost 
in  feeling,  we  are  wonderfully  moved  by  the 
natural  efforts  of  a  Garrick  or  a  Siddons;  but 
this  is  independent  of  the  stage  effect,  and 
would  be  as  strong  in  a  room  as  on  the  stage." 

The  first  to  challenge  this  theory  of  the 
drama  was  a  scholar  and  critic  of  the  later 
Renaissance,  Lodovico  Castelvetro,  who 
published  an  Italian  version  of  Aristotle's 
Poetics  in  1570.  The  version  is  embedded, 
one  might  almost  say  lost,   in   an   elabo- 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    59 

rate  commentary  of  over  three  hundred 
thousand  words,  which  covers  the  whole 
field  of  literary  theory  with  remarkable 
thoroughness  and  with  even  more  remark- 
able independence  of  mind.  Indeed,  this 
independence  of  mind  gained  for  him  the 
rancor  of  classicists  in  all  the  countries 
of  Europe  for  a  century  or  more,  and 
several  pages  might  be  filled  with  the 
protests  of  continental  scholars  and  critics 
against  what  seemed  to  them  the  pervers- 
ity, the  heretical  doctrines,  and  the  exces- 
sive subtlety  and  acuteness  of  Castelvetro's 
book.  He  was  an  aggressive  controversial- 
ist by  temperament,  belonging  to  those 
"literary  gladiators  of  the  Renaissance" 
(as  Nisard  calls  them)  who  regarded  schol- 
arship as  an  instrument  of  logical  disputa- 
tion as  much  as  (if  not  more  than)  a 
means  of  uncovering  buried  truth.  It  is 
easy  for  any  shallowpate  to  disagree  with 
Aristotle  now;  but  when  we  consider  that 
the  theory  of  Aristotelian  infallibility  in 
letters   died  hard  even  at  the  end  of  the 


6o    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

eighteenth  century,  and  that  even  Lessing 
thought  the  Poetics  as  infaUible  in  criticism 
as  Euclid  in  geometry,  we  must  salute  the 
commentator  who  did  not  fear  to  take 
direct  issue  with  Aristotle  at  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth  century. 

Castelvetro  certainly  takes  issue  with 
Aristotle  on  the  question  whether  the 
drama  exhibits  its  real  power  in  the  study 
or  in  the  theatre.  "Non  e  vero  quello  che 
Aristotele  dice,"  he  says:  it  simply  is  not 
true,  what  Aristotle  says,  that  the  value 
of  a  play  can  be  discovered  by  reading  in 
the  same  way  as  by  theatrical  representa- 
tion, for  the  reason  that  a  few  highly 
gifted  and  imaginative  men  might  be  able 
to  judge  a  play  in  this  way,  whereas  every 
one,  the  gifted  and  the  ignorant  alike,  can 
follow  and  appreciate  a  play  when  it  is 
acted.  Nor  is  it  true,  he  tells  us  elsewhere, 
that  the  same  pleasure  is  derived  from  the 
reading  of  plays  as  from  seeing  them  on 
the  stage;  the  pleasure  is  different  in  kind, 
and  the  peculiar  pleasure  of  a  play  is  to 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    6i 

be  derived  only  from  its  representation 
in  the  theatre.  In  order  to  understand 
what  the  drama  is,  and  what  is  the  pecu- 
liar pleasure  that  it  affords  to  men,  we  must 
examine  the  conditions  of  the  physical 
theatre,  and  realize  exactly  what  is  to  be 
found  there.  The  fact  that  the  drama  is 
intended  for  the  stage,  that  it  is  to  be 
acted,  must  form  the  basis  of  every  true 
theory  of  tragedy  or  comedy. 

A  number  of  years  ago  I  pointed  out  Cas- 
telvetro's  priority  in  stating  this  theory  of 
the  theatre,  and  I  can  only  repeat  the  sum- 
mary that  I  gave  of  it  then.  What,  ac- 
cording to  him,  are  the  conditions  of  stage 
representation.''  The  theatre  is  a  public 
place,  in  which  a  play  is  presented  before 
a  motley  crowd — la  moltitiidine  rozza — 
upon  a  circumscribed  platform  or  stage, 
within  a  limited  space  of  time.  To  this 
idea  the  whole  of  Castelvctro's  dramatic 
system  is  conformed.  In  the  first  place, 
since  the  audience  may  be  great  in  number, 
the  theatre   must   be   large,   and   yet   the 


62     CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

audience  must  be  able  to  hear  the  play; 
hence  verse  Is  added,  not  merely  as  a  de- 
lightful accompaniment,  but  also  in  order 
that  the  actors  may  raise  their  voices 
without  inconvenience  and  without  loss 
of  dignity.  In  the  second  place,  the  audi- 
ence is  not  a  select  gathering  of  choice 
spirits,  but  a  motley  crowd  of  people, 
drawn  to  the  theatre  for  the  purpose  of 
pleasure  or  recreation;  accordingly,  ab- 
struse themes,  and  in  fact  all  technical 
discussions,  must  be  avoided  by  the  play- 
wright, who  is  limited,  as  we  should  say 
to-day,  to  the  elemental  passions  and 
interests  of  men.  In  the  third  place,  the 
actors  are  required  to  move  about  on  a 
raised  and  narrow  platform;  and  this  is 
the  reason  why  deeds  of  violence,  and  many 
other  things  which  cannot  be  acted  on  such 
a  platform  with  convenience  and  dignity, 
should  not  be  represented  in  the  drama. 
And  finally,  the  physical  convenience  of 
the  people  in  the  audience,  who  cannot 
comfortably  remain  in  the  theatre  without 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    63 

food  and  other  physical  necessities  for  an 
indefinite  period  of  time,  limits  the  length 
of  the  play  to  about  three  or  four  hours. 

Many  of  Castelvetro's  incidental  conclu- 
sions may  seem  hopelessly  outworn  to-day; 
but  the  modernity  of  his  system  is  self- 
evident,  if  by  modernity  we  mean  agree- 
ment with  the  theories  that  happen  to  be 
most  popular  in  our  own  time.  Certainly, 
for  nearly  two  centuries,  the  path  which 
he  blazed  was  not  crowded  with  followers. 
A  few  writers  during  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries,  a  very  few,  echo 
haltingly  and  intermittently  some  of  his 
ideas  about  the  relations  of  the  drama  and 
the  actual  theatre.  But  it  was  not  until 
the  days  of  Diderot  that  they  found  again 
systematic  and  intelligent  discussion.  In 
several  of  Diderot's  essays  and  dialogues, 
— in  his  discourse  on  dramatic  poetry,  in 
his  famous  Paradox  of  the  Actor,  but  more 
especially  in  his  Entretiens  sur  le  Fils  Nat- 
urel, — the  accents  of  "  modernity"  are  even 
more  apparent  than  in  his  Italian  predeces- 


64    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

sor,  and  one  or  two  notes  are  sounded  that 
are  so  much  of  our  own  time  that  it  seems 
difficult  to  believe  they  can  be  older  than 
yesterday. 

Diderot's  central  idea  in  the  Entretiens 
is  that  the  essential  part  of  a  play  is  not 
created  by  the  poet  at  all,  but  by  the  actor. 
Gestures,  inarticulate  cries,  facial  expres- 
sions, movements  of  the  body,  a  few  mon- 
osyllables which  escape  from  the  lips  at 
intervals  are  what  really  move  us  in  the 
theatre;  and  to  such  an  extent  is  this  true, 
that  all  that  really  belongs  to  the  poet  is 
the  scenario,  while  words,  even  ideas  and 
scenes,  might  be  left  to  the  actor  to  omit, 
add  to,  or  alter.  He  himself  sketches  the 
scenario  of  a  tragedy  in  monosyllables, 
with  an  exclamation  here,  the  commence- 
ment of  a  phrase  there,  scarcely  ever  a  con- 
secutive discourse.  "There  is  true  trag- 
edy," he  cries;  "but  for  works  of  this  kind 
we  need  authors,  actors,  a  theatre,  and 
perhaps  a  whole  people!" 

Yes,  obviously  actors,  even  authors,  but 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    65 

why  a  theatre  and  a  whole  people  for 
drama  like  this?  Because  the  mere  pres- 
ence of  a  large  number  of  people  assembled 
together  in  a  theatre  has  its  own  special 
effect  that  must  be  considered  in  every 
discussion  of  the  drama.  Here  we  meet, 
although  not  for  the  first  time,  what  is 
now  known  as  the  theory  of  the  "psychol- 
ogy of  the  crowd."  Bacon,  in  the  De 
Augmentis,  had  pointed  out  the  won- 
derful effectiveness  of  the  theatre  as  an  in- 
strument of  public  m.orality,  in  the  hands  of 
ancient  playwrights,  and  explained  this 
effectiveness  on  the  ground  that  it  is  a 
"secret  of  nature"  that  men's  minds  arc 
more  open  to  passions  and  impressions 
"congregate  than  solitary."  Before  him 
Castelvetro  had  estimated  the  influence 
of  the  theatrical  audience  in  general  on 
the  nature  of  the  drama,  finding  it  espe- 
cially in  the  necessity  imposed  upon  the 
playwright  of  avoiding  all  themes  and 
ideas  unintelligible  to  the  miscellaneous 
gathering    at    a    theatrical    performance. 


66    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

But  Diderot  finds  a  dual  effect.  Mobs  and 
popular  revolts  make  it  clear  how  conta- 
gious is  passion  or  excitement  in  a  great 
concourse  of  people;  self-restraint  and  de- 
cency have  no  meaning  for  thousands 
gathered  together,  whatever  may  be  the 
temperament  of  each  individual  in  the 
crowd.  The  effect  of  the  play  is  heightened 
for  each  spectator  because  there  are  many 
spectators  to  hear  and  see  it  together;  but 
the  presence  of  the  crowd  has  a  kindred 
influence  on  the  playwright  and  the  actor. 
They,  too,  share  the  effect  of  the  "psychol- 
ogy of  the  crowd:"  the  actor  has  the  crowd 
before  him  in  fact,  the  poet  in  imagination, 
and  both  do  their  work  differently  than 
if  they  were  preparing  a  solitary  en- 
tertainment. Like  the  orator  on  the 
public  platform  or  the  mountebank  on 
the  street  corner,  the  playwright  must 
suit  his  particular  audience  or  he  will 
fail. 

This,  says  Diderot,  is  the  secret  of  the 
failure  of  French  tragedy  in  the  eighteenth 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    67 

century.  The  Greek  drama  is  the  product 
of  a  vast  amphitheatre,  the  enormous 
crowds  that  frequented  it,  and  the  solemn 
occasions  that  brought  them  together; 
these  explain  its  simplicity  of  plot,  its 
versification,  its  dignity  and  emphasis,  all 
proclaiming  a  discourse  chanted  in  spacious 
places  and  in  noble  surroundings.  The 
French  drama,  however,  has  imitated  the 
emphasis,  the  versification,  the  dignity  of 
the  Greeks,  but  without  the  physical  sur- 
roundings that  made  the  ancient  drama 
suited  to  its  environment,  and  without 
the  simplicity  of  plot  and  thought  that 
its  other  methods  justify.  Simplify  the 
French  play  and  beautify  the  French  stage: 
this  is  Diderot's  recipe  for  restoring  the 
glory  of  Greek  drama  in  the  modern  world; 
a  larger  and  more  adequate  theatre  and 
more  beautiful  stage  decoration  are  the 
first  prerequisites  of  reform.  It  is  Vol- 
taire's recipe  too:  the  elimination  of  petty 
gallantry  from  the  French  drama  and  the 
substitution  of  an  adequate  edifice  for  the 


68    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

"narrow  miserable  theatre  with  its  poor 
scenery." 

The  world  will  never  cease  to  seek  ex- 
ternal cures  for  inner  deficiencies  of  the  hu- 
man spirit;  and  yet  every  age  must  protest 
against  this  form  of  quackery  in  its  own 
way.  In  this  case  it  was  left  to  Lessing  to 
point  out  Diderot's  and  Voltaire's  more 
obvious  errors.  Lessing's  Hamburgische 
Dramaturgic  was  a  product  of  actual  con- 
tact with  the  theatre;  it  is,  at  least  ap- 
parently, a  discussion  of  one  play  after 
another  as  Lessing  saw  them  acted  on  the 
stage.  But  out  of  this  accidental  succes- 
sion of  theatrical  performances  he  formu- 
lates a  more  or  less  consistent  programme 
for  the  development  of  a  new  and  more 
vital  dramatic  literature  in  his  own  coun- 
try; not,  however,  by  means  of  an  im- 
proved theatre  or  more  elaborate  stage 
decorations,  but  by  a  new  and  creative 
impulse  in  the  plays  themselves.  In  the 
eightieth  number  of  the  Dramaturgie  he 
answers  the  theatrical  arguments  of  Vol- 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    69 

taire  and  Diderot  by  an  appeal  to  history. 
The  Shakespearean  drama,  considered  in 
connection  with  the  poverty  of  Elizabethan 
stage  decoration,  proves  conclusively  for 
him  that  there  is  no  real  relation  between 
elaborate  scenery  or  splendid  theatrical 
edifices  and  great  drama  itself.  Docs 
every  tragedy  need  pomp  and  display,  or 
should  the  poet  arrange  his  play  so  that  it 
will  produce  its  effect  without  these  ex- 
ternal aids.'  Lessing's  answer  to  these 
questions  is  identical  with  Aristotle's. 
Indeed,  he  forestalls  Lamb's  theory  that 
a  great  play  cannot  be  properly  acted  at 
all:  "A  masterpiece  is  rarely  as  well  repre- 
sented as  it  is  written;  mediocrity  always 
fares  better  with  the  actors." 

Still  there  must  lurk  a  doubt  in  regard  to 
his  consistency.  "To  what  end  the  hard 
work  of  the  dramatic  form.'"'  he  asks; 
"Why  build  a  theatre,  disguise  men  and 
women,  torture  their  memories,  invite  the 
whole  town  to  assemble  at  one  place,  if 
I  intend  to  produce  nothing  more  with  my 


70    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

work  and  its  representation  than  some  of 
those  emotions  that  would  be  produced  by 
any  good  story  that  every  one  could  read 
by  his  chimney-corner  at  home?"  We 
may  well  ask  ourselves  what  Lessing  really 
means  by  this  question.  There  never  was 
a  thing  written,  lyric,  ballad,  epic,  drama, 
or  what  not,  that  was  not  strengthened  in 
the  impression  it  makes,  by  having  a  noble 
voice  or  an  exquisite  art  express  it  for  us. 
Of  course  the  trained  actor  gives  a  new 
fire  and  flavor  to  the  drama;  of  course 
attendance  at  a  theatre  adds  pleasures  to 
those  derived  merely  by  reading  a  play  in 
solitude;  of  course  when  we  have  recourse 
to  sound  and  sight,  to  music  and  archi- 
tecture and  painting,  in  the  theatre,  we  are 
adding  complicated  sensations  to  those 
that  properly  spring  from  the  nature  of  the 
drama  itself.  If  Lessing  means  to  ask 
whether  these  added  sensations  are  worth 
the  cost  of  building  theatres  and  training 
actors,  who  will  answer  no.''  But  if  he 
means  to  imply  that  it  would  not  be  worth 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    71 

building  theatres  and  training  actors  un- 
less the  drama  were  a  vie  manquee  without 
them,  then  we  can  only  answer  his  question 
by  asking  some  of  our  own.  Why  build 
libraries,  train  librarians,  perfect  systems 
of  library  administration  and  bibliography, 
if  we  get  nothing  out  of  a  book  in  a  library 
that  we  could  not  get  out  of  it  in  our  study 
at  home?  Why  develop  the  arts  of  typog- 
raphy and  binding,  if  we  can  get  as  much 
pleasure  out  of  a  volume  in  manuscript  as 
out  of  a  printed  book;  or  why  have  beauti- 
ful type  and  rich  bindings,  if  we  can  find 
the  real  soul  of  a  book  in  the  cheapest  and 
ugliest  of  types  and  bindings?  These 
questions  bring  with  them  their  own 
reductio  ad  absurdum;  for  obviously  we 
build  libraries,  and  develop  the  arts  of 
typography  and  binding,  for  quite  other 
reasons  than  that  books  are  not  books 
without  them,  or  that  the  critic  must  con- 
sider any  of  the  three  when  he  is  criticizing 
the  content  of  a  book. 

Forty  years  of  historical  research,  of  aes- 


72    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

thetic  theory,  and  of  wider  acquaintance 
with  the  literatures  of  the  world  inter- 
vened between  the  Hamburgische  Dra- 
tnaturgie  and  Schlegel's  Lectures  on  Dra- 
matic Art  and  Literature;  and  in  these 
the  methods  inaugurated  by  Castelvetro 
were  applied,  if  not  for  the  first  time,  at 
least  with  the  largest  amount  of  consist- 
ency, to  the  actual  history  of  the  drama. 
In  Schlegel's  first  two  lectures  we  find  all 
the  theories  we  have  already  met,  as 
well  as  others  of  kindred  intention.  The 
drama  is  dialogue,  but  dialogue  with  con- 
flict and  change,  and  without  personal 
explanation  of  this  conflict  or  change  on 
the  part  of  the  playwright.  There  is  only 
one  way  in  which  this  can  be  done:  by 
having  men  and  women  actually  represent 
the  characters,  imitate  their  voices  and 
temperaments,  and  carry  on  the  discourse 
in  surroundings  that  have  some  similarity 
to  those  imagined  by  the  playwright. 
Without  this  help  (and  this  is  Schlegel's 
central  idea)  dramatic  dialogue  would  de- 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    7.^ 

mand  personal  explanation  on  the  part  of 
the  playwright  to  make  his  meaning  clear; 
that  is  forbidden  by  the  very  idea  of  drama ; 
and  so  the  theatre  is  implicit  in  the  nature 
of  drama  itself.  In  the  theatre,  "where 
the  magic  of  many  combined  arts  can  be 
displayed,"  these  all  help  the  playwright 
in  "producing  an  impression  on  an  as- 
sembled multitude."  Here  we  are  once 
more  faced  by  the  theory  of  the  "psy- 
chology of  the  crowd."  According  to 
Schlegel,  the  main  object  of  the  drama  is 
to  "produce  an  impression  on  an  assembled 
crowd,  to  gain  their  attention,  and  to  ex- 
cite in  them  interest  and  participation." 
The  impression  is  intensified  by  reason  of 
the  numbers  that  share  it:  "The  effect 
produced  by  seeing  a  number  of  others 
share  in  the  same  emotions  ...  is  aston- 
ishingly powerful." 

For  Schlegel,  the  theatrical  and  the  dra- 
matic are  bound  together,  not  only  in  their 
very  nature,  but,  as  a  consequence,  in 
their  history.     Acting  and  theatrical  per- 


74     CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

formances  of  greater  or  lesser  complexity- 
are  to  be  found  in  various  primitive  ages 
and  among  various  primitive  peoples,  and 
mimicry  is  innate  in  man's  nature.  On 
these  assumptions  Schlegel  sketches  the 
earlier  history  of  the  stage,  as  indeed 
Aristotle  had  done  for  Greek  tragedy,  and 
carries  on  this  history  throughout  his  dis- 
cussion of  the  modern  drama.  The  Eliza- 
bethan theatre's  paucity  of  stage  scenery 
is  cited  as  proof  of  the  glory  of  Shake- 
speare, inasmuch  as  he  was  able  to  give  the 
air  of  reality,  to  produce  complete  illusion, 
without  such  adventitious  aid.  And  so 
Schlegel  proceeds  in  the  case  of  each 
period  of  dramatic  poetry;  indicating  the 
condition  of  the  theatre  almost  always,  but 
never  quite  arriving  at  the  more  modern 
conception  by  which  the  shape  of  the 
theatre  or  of  the  stage  is  regarded  as  having 
actually  determined  the  nature  of  the 
drama  in  each  age. 

The    Austrian   playwright,  Grillparzer, 
whose    prose    works    abound    in    critical 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    75 

acuteness,  came  to  regard  Schlegel's  lec- 
tures as  "dangerous;"  but  the  ideas  they 
contained,  so  far  as  the  relations  of  drama 
and  theatre  are  concerned,  had  a  germinal 
influence  on  his  own  dramatic  criticism. 
He  was  the  most  aggressive  opponent  of 
the  "closet-drama"  that  had  yet  appeared; 
and  he  was  relentless  in  his  contempt  for 
all  fine  writing,  soliloquies,  and  mere 
poetry  that  do  not  contribute  to  the  "ac- 
tion" of  a  play.  He  goes  so  far  as  to  say 
that  the  distinction  between  theatrical 
and  dramatic  is  false;  whatever  is  one  must 
inevitably  be  the  other.  If  time  and  space 
permitted,  it  would  be  interesting  to  dis- 
cuss in  detail  Grillparzer's  theories  of  the 
drama,  especially  as  they  have  been  neg- 
lected by  English  critics.  But  the  fact  is 
that  intellectual  hegemony  in  these  mat- 
ters had  already  passed  to  France  while 
Grillparzer  was  still  writing,  and  we 
cannot  remain  longer  in  the  company 
of  German  theorists,  although  many  of 
them  have  contributed  largely,  if  not  al- 


76    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

ways  wisely,  to  the  subject  under  discus- 
sion. 

There  still  remains  one  period  of  dram- 
atic theory  to  consider,  the  period  of  theat- 
ricalism  rampant.  The  French  have  been 
the  masters  of  this  form  of  dramatic 
criticism,  and  since  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  their  footsteps  have 
been  followed  with  little  or  no  protest  by 
the  critics  of  the  world.  Critics  like  Mr. 
A.  B.  Walkley  and  Mr.  William  Archer,  not 
to  mention  their  noisy  but  negligible  echoes 
in  our  own  country,  have  little  enough  to 
add  to  what  Frenchmen  had  already  said  be- 
fore them  on  this  subject.  The  extremist  in 
this  movement,  and  indeed  in  some  senses 
a  pioneer,  is  Francisque  Sarcey;  and  no  one 
has  gone  further  in  the  direction  of  making 
drama  and  theatre  mutually  interchange- 
able terms  than  he.  Doubtless  it  was  of 
him  and  his  kind  that  Flaubert  was  think- 
ing when  he  wrote  to  George  Sand  over 
forty  years  ago:  "One  of  the  most  comical 
things    of    our    time    is    this    newfangled 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM     77 

theatrical  mystery  {r arcane  thedtral).  They 
tell  us  that  the  art  of  the  theatre  Is  be- 
yond the  limits  of  human  intelligence,  and 
that  it  is  a  mystery  reserved  for  men  who 
write  like  cab-drivers.  The  question  of 
success  surpasses  all  others.  It  is  the  school 
of  demoralization."  Two  years  after  this 
was  written  Sarcey  summed  up  his  code 
in  extenso  in  an  Essai  dUine  Esthetique  de 
Theatre,  which  still  remains  the  clearest 
and  most  extreme  expression  of  this  form 
of  dramatic  materialism. 

Sarcey  assumes  three  fundamental  hy- 
potheses: first,  that  the  only  purpose  of  a 
play  is  to  please  a  definite  body  of  men 
and  women  assembled  in  a  theatre;  sec- 
ondly, that  in  order  to  do  this,  the  play- 
wright is  limited,  or  if  you  will,  aided,  by 
certain  tricks  and  conventions  of  the 
theatre;  and  finally,  some  of  these  conven- 
tions change  from  age  to  age  or  from 
country  to  country,  while  others  are  in- 
evitable and  eternal.  On  the  basis  of  these 
assumptions,  he  frames  this  pretty  defini- 


78    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

tion  of  the  drama:  "Dramatic  art  is  the 
ensemble  of  conventions,  universal  or  local, 
eternal  or  temporary,  by  the  aid  of  which 
the  playwright,  representing  human  life 
in  a  theatre,  gives  to  the  audience  an 
illusion  of  truth."  Foild  done!  Here  is 
the  greatness  of  Hamlet  and  Oedipus  most 
simply  set  down.  Here  is  a  definition  that 
makes  it  an  easy  matter  to  understand  the 
greatness  of  all  the  great  plays  of  the  past! 
Like  nearly  all  his  predecessors  from  the 
time  of  Castelvetro,  of  whom  Sarcey  had 
doubtlessnever  heard,  our  aesthetician  of  the 
theatre  places  the  idea  of  an  audience  first. 
When  you  think  of  the  theatre,  he  says,  you 
think  of  the  presence  of  the  public;  when 
you  think  of  a  play,  you  think  in  the  same 
instant  of  the  public  come  to  hear  it.  You 
can  omit  every  other  requirement,  but  you 
cannot  omit  the  audience.  It  is  the  inevi- 
table, the  fatal  sine  qua  no7i.  To  it  dramatic 
art  must  accommodate  all  its  organs,  and 
from  it  can  be  drawn,  without  a  single 
exception,  all  the  laws  of  the  theatre. 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    79 

This  is  Sarccy's  fundamental  condition 
in  1876;  and  it  is  still  fundamental  with 
most  of  the  dramatic  critics  of  to-day.    Mr. 
Walkley,  for  instance,  in  a  half-solemn,  half- 
facetious   review  of  my   lecture  on   "The 
New  Criticism"  which  he  did  me  the  honor 
to  write  for  the  London  Times  a  few  years 
ago,    asserts   that   the  dramatic  critic  can 
only  appraise  a  play  "by  an  evaluation 
of   the   aesthetic    pleasure    received,"    and 
that  in  order  to  do  this,  he  must  "  take  into 
account    the   peculiar   conditions"    under 
which  the  dramatist  works.    These  pecu- 
liar conditions  are  of  course  the  audience  of 
Sarcey  (Mr.  Walkley  calls  it  the  "peculiar 
psychology  of  the  crowd  he  is  addressing") 
and   Sarcey's   conventions  of  the   theatre 
(although  Mr.  Walkley  limits  them  to  "the 
conformation  of  the  stage").     The  critic 
of  the   Times  has  studied  and  considered, 
perhaps  more  carefully  than  any  of  his  pred- 
ecessors,  the   various   vicissitudes  of   this 
"conformation  of  the  stage."     I  have  no 
reason  to  doubt  his  authority  in  the  field  of 


So    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

stage  history;  but  his  authority  ceases  in  the 
field  of  aesthetic  theory.  A  writer  who  has 
sense  enough  to  understand  that  the  dra- 
matic critic  must  "sit  tight"  against  the 
prejudices  and  opinions  of  theatrical  au- 
diences, preserving  at  all  hazards  his  own 
judgment  (I  am  paraphrasing  a  lecture 
of  Mr.  Walkley  on  Dramatic  Criticism), 
and  who  in  the  very  next  breath  tells  us 
that  the  playwright  must  be  judged  by 
his  effect  on  "the  peculiar  psychology  of 
the  crowd  he  is  addressing,"  has  evidently 
not  mastered  the  elements  of  aesthetic 
logic.  As  for  Francisque  Sarcey,  who  is 
responsible  for  so  much  of  this  cheap 
materialism  of  contemporary  dramatic 
criticism,  he  seems  to  me  as  shallow  a 
dogmatist  as  ever  wrote  criticisms  of 
plays  for  the  press;  and  decent  invective 
can  hardly  go  farther  than  that. 

Now,  what  is  meant  by  this  idea,  by  no 
means  modern,  but  in  our  day  more  per- 
sistent than  ever,  that  the  peculiar  char- 
acteristic of  dramatic  literature  is  that  it  is 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    8i 

intended  for  an  assembled  crowd?  Ob- 
viously not  merely  that  men  are  more 
impressionable  in  crowds  than  when  alone, 
and  that  the  dramatist  has  an  advantage 
over  most  other  writers  in  that  he  may 
make  his  appeal  to  men  when  they  are 
most  impressionable.  This  may  be  Ba- 
con's thought,  but  it  is  far  from  being 
Diderot's  or  Schlegel's  or  Mr.  Walkley's. 
What  these  men  assert  is  that  the  crowd  is 
inherent  in  the  very  idea  of  a  play,  and 
that  this  crowd  has  a  peculiar  psychology 
different  in  kind  from  that  of  any  in- 
dividual composing  it.  Indeed,  I  believe 
I  have  read  some  flighty  utterances  of  late 
to  the  effect  that  so  far  from  remaining 
civilized  beings,  we  all  revert  to  our  primi- 
tive savage  state  when  we  become  part  of  a 
crowd,  and  that  the  drama  must  therefore 
always  appeal  to  what  is  primitive  and 
savage  in  our  natures  more  than  any  other 
form  of  literature.  Well,  the  fact  is  that  all 
of  us  are  primitive  men  in  spots,  and  that 
the  theatre  may  appeal  to  what  is  primitive 


82     CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

in  us  if  it  chooses;  but  so  does  fire,  so  does 
shipwreck  or  drowning,  whether  we  choose 
or  not;  and  for  that  matter,  to  get  as  far 
from  the  crowd  as  possible,  so  does  soli- 
tude. If  anything  is  certain  in  regard  to 
that  strange  creature  man,  it  is  that  in 
solitudes,  what  we  call  civilization  is  most 
likely  to  fall  from  him;  and  we  might  with 
at  least  equal  truth  argue  that  lyric  or 
didactic  poetry,  intended  to  be  read  in  the 
quiet  of  a  man's  study,  must  appeal  to  the 
most  primitive  instincts  in  him,  and  that 
therefore  all  lyric  or  didactic  poetry  must 
of  necessity  deal  with  more  primitive  and 
savage  themes  than  any  other  forms  of 
literature.  But  the  inner  logic  of  art  is 
independent  of  these  incidental  and  extran- 
eous classifications  of  artistic  form.  All 
literature  makes  its  appeal  to  the  same 
spiritual  side  of  man's  nature,  and  the 
appeal  is  not  altered  by  any  abstract  clas- 
sification, lyric,  didactic,  dramatic,  or  what 
not,  which  has  no  higher  function  than  con- 
venience of  discussion. 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    83 

Not  only  is  the  crowd  different  from  its 
constituent  individualities,  and  more  prim- 
itive in  instinct  than  they  (I  am  of  course 
summarizing  the  virtues  of  the  imaginary 
crowd  created  by  modern  psychologists 
and  dramatic  critics),  but  it  is  also  in- 
attentive, engrossed  in  itself,  difficult  to 
interest,  and  the  first  object  of  the  play- 
wright must  be  to  compel  its  attention. 
But  the  fact  is  that  most  men  and  women 
(whether  in  a  crowd  or  by  themselves)  are 
without  the  faculty  of  intellectual  con- 
centration. Great  art  ignores  this  and 
other  like  frailties  of  men,  in  the  theatre 
and  out  of  it;  while  mediocre  art  focuses  its 
attention  on  them,  in  the  novel,  in  song, 
ballad,  lyric,  essay,  no  less  than  in  drama. 
A  great  Italian  critic,  indeed  one  of  the 
greatest  critics  of  the  modern  world,  Fran- 
cesco de  Sanctis,  gave  this  famous  advice 
to  a  young  poet  anxious  to  know  how  he 
could  best  serve  the  higher  morals  in 
poetry:  "Don't  think  about  morals;  that  is 
the  best  way  of  serving  them  in  art."     In 


84    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

much  the  same  way,  we  might  say  to  the 
playwright:  "Don't  think  about  your 
audience;  that  is  the  best  way  of  serving  it 
in  the  drama." 

It  will  be  remembered  that  Pye,  in  com- 
menting on  Aristotle,  pointed  out  that 
Garrick  or  Siddons  reciting  a  dramatic 
poem  in  a  room  might  affect  us  with  the 
same  pleasure  as  if  they  were  acting  in  the 
theatre.  Now,  if  we  do  not  prefer  rather  to 
err  with  Mr.  Walkley  than  shine  with  Pye, 
we  may  go  a  step  farther,  and  assume  that 
the  audience  of  Garrick  or  Siddons  in  that 
little  room  has  been  reduced  to  a  single 
spectator.  Will  there  be  any  diminution 
in  the  power  of  Garrick  or  Siddons  over 
him  because  of  the  absence  of  a  crowd? 
Or  even  assuming  that  Garrick  or  Siddons 
might  find  a  stimulus  to  added  passion  in 
the  presence  of  a  large  audience,  or  that 
our  single  auditor  would  feel  stimulated 
also  by  the  crowd  in  the  theatre,  how  can 
we  for  a  moment  believe  that  the  pleasure 
he  receives  in  the  room  is  different  in  its 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    85 

nature  from  the  pleasure  received  from  the 
recitation  in  the  crowded  theatre?  So 
that  even  histrionic  art,  not  to  mention 
dramatic  art,  speaks  with  the  same  voice 
in  solitude  as  in  crowds;  and  all  the  more 
then  will  the  drama  itself,  "even  apart 
from  representation  and  actors",  as  old 
Aristotle  puts  it,  speak  with  its  highest 
power  to  the  imagination  fitted  to  under- 
stand and  receive  it. 

No,  Mr.  Walkley  and  Brunetiere  and 
others  like  them  are  right  when  they  say 
that  the  dramatic  critic  must  "sit  tight" 
against  the  prejudices  of  the  crowd,  must 
preserve  his  own  judgment;  which  is  only 
another  way  of  saying  that  the  critic  must 
be  an  artist  like  the  dramatist  he  is  crit- 
icizing; and  this  in  turn  is  another  way  of 
saying  that  a  play  must  be  judged  by  its 
effect  on  an  individual  temperament,  and 
not  by  "the  peculiar  psychology  of  the 
crowd."  But  unfortunately  the  demorali- 
zation which  forty  years  ago  Flaubert 
foresaw  in  all  this  arcane  thedtral,  all  this 


86    CREATIVE   CRITICISM 

pedantry  of  "dramatic  technique,"  of 
"dramaturgic  skill,"  of  scenes  a  faire,  of 
the  conditions  of  the  theatre,  the  influence 
of  the  audience,  and  the  conformation  of 
the  stage,  this  demoralization,  I  say,  has 
overwhelmed  the  criticism  of  the  drama. 
What  the  unities,  decorum,  liaison  des 
scenes^  and  kindred  petty  limitations  and 
restrictions  were  to  dramatic  theory  in 
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries, 
these  things  are  to  criticism  in  the  nine- 
teenth and  twentieth.  They  constitute 
the  new  pedantry,  against  which  all 
aesthetic  criticism,  as  well  as  all  creative 
literature,  must  wage  a  battle  for  life. 
How  deeply  this  pedantry  has  permeated 
the  criticism  of  our  age  becomes  even 
more  obvious  when  we  examine  the  work 
of  the  aesthetic  critics  themselves.  They 
cannot  wholly  subdue  their  minds  to  so  me- 
chanical a  theory,  but  its  phrases  and  for- 
mulae they  repeat  in  a  sort  of  parrot-like 
fashion,  even  when  in  the  next  breath  their 
truer  understanding  of  poetry  makes  them 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    87 

deny  its  truth.  So  Mr.  Arthur  Symons,  for 
example,  tells  us  that  "a  play  is  written  to 
be  acted,  and  it  will  not  be  literature 
merely  because  its  sentences  are  nicely 
written;  it  will  be  literature,  dramatic 
literature,  if  in  addition  to  being  nicely 
written,  it  has  qualities  which  make  a 
stage-play  a  good  stage-play."  And  yet 
in  the  same  book,  dealing  with  a  particular 
play,  he  says  that  "the  piece  was  con- 
structed entirely  with  a  view  to  effective- 
ness, superficial  effectiveness  on  the  stage, 
and  not  according  to  the  variable  but 
quite  capturable  logic  of  human  na- 
ture; ...  as  a  thing  to  be  acted,  not  as 
life,  not  as  drama."  This  final  jumble 
may  be  capped  by  a  sentence  of  Mr.  Lau- 
rence Binyon's,  which  might  well  serve 
as  a  minute  master-piece  of  confused 
aesthetic  thinking:  "If  poets  mean  to 
serve  the  stage,  their  dramas  must  be 
dramatic."  What  can  this  mean  except 
that  if  poets  wish  to  make  the  theatre 
successful,    they    must    write    plays    that 


88    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

will  make  the  theatre  successful?  Or  if  it 
does  not  mean  that,  what  else  can  it 
mean  that  is  not  equally  meaningless? 
But  to  serve  the  theatre  in  any  practical 
sense  is  not  an  aesthetic  aim,  and  can  never 
be  the  aim  of  a  poet;  there  is  only  one  way 
in  which  he  can  serve  it  well,  and  that  is 
to  express  the  best  there  is  in  him,  and 
that  only.  The  answer  to  Mr.  Symons 
at  his  worst  may  well  come  from  Mr. 
Symons  at  his  best.  No  one  has  ex- 
pressed that  answer  more  clearly  than  he: 
"To  you,  as  to  me,  whatever  has  been 
beautifully  wrought,  by  whatever  crafts- 
man, and  in  whatever  manner  of  working, 
if  only  he  has  been  true  to  himself,  to  his 
own  way  of  realizing  the  things  he  sees, 
that,  to  you  as  to  me,  is  a  work  of  art." 

Regarding  the  theatre,  therefore,  not  as  a 
place  of  amusement  (although  in  that  too 
it  has  of  course  its  justification  as  much  as 
golf  or  tennis),  not  as  a  business  under- 
taking (in  which  case  we  should  have  to 
consider  the  box-office  receipts  as  the  test 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    89 

of  a  play's  excellence),  not  as  an  instru- 
ment of  public  morality  (since  our  concern 
here  is  not  with  ethics  or  sociology),  but 
regarding  it  solely  as  the  home  or  the 
cradle  of  a  great  art,  what  do  we  find  its 
relations  to  dramatic  criticism?  Merely 
this,  that  for  aesthetic  criticism  the  theatre 
simply  does  not  exist.  For  criticism,  a 
theatre  means  only  the  appearance  at  any 
one  time  or  in  any  one  country,  as  Croce 
puts  it,  of  a  "series  of  artistic  souls." 
When  these  artistic  souls  appear,  theatres 
will  spring  up  like  mushrooms  to  house 
them,  and  the  humblest  garret  will  serve 
as  an  eyrie  for  their  art.  But  all  these 
external  conditions  are  merely  dead  mate- 
rial which  has  no  aesthetic  significance  out- 
side of  the  poet's  soul;  and  only  in  the 
poet's  art  should  we  seek  to  find  them. 

No  misconception  of  art  is  so  persistent 
as  this  confusion  between  inner  impulse 
and  outer  influence.  A  poet,  let  us  say, 
finds  that  a  brisk  walk  stimulates  his 
writing,  or  that  he  can  write  more  easily 


90    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

when  he  has  smoked  a  cigarette.  The 
walk  or  the  cigarette  has  not  produced 
the  poetry;  it  has  simply  served  as  a  stimu- 
lus to  the  personality  that  creates  the 
poetry.  It  opens  the  faucet,  but  who 
would  be  so  foolish  as  to  maintain  that  it 
produces  or  alters  the  water  that  gushes 
forth.?  Other  poets  find  that  they  cannot 
write  easily  without  the  stimulus  of  imag- 
ined reward, — money,  the  plaudits  of  the 
crowd,  the  resplendent  beauty  of  theatri- 
cal performance.  But  men  with  the  same 
ambitions  write  different  poems  or  plays, 
and  in  this  difference  lies  the  real  secret 
of  art.  For  after  all,  whatever  the  imagi- 
nary stimulus,  there  is  only  one  real  urge 
in  the  poet's  soul,  to  express  what  is  in 
him,  to  body  forth  his  own  vision  of  real- 
ity as  well  as  he  can.  To  say,  therefore, 
that  playwrights  write  for  the  stage,  that 
poets  write  for  money,  that  painters  paint 
to  be  "hung,"  is  to  confuse  mere  stimulus 
with  creative  impulse. 

For  Mr.  William  Archer  this  distinction, 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    91 

one  of  the  most  fundamental  of  all  dis- 
tinctions in  criticism,  is  a  mere  dispute 
between  Tweedledum  and  Tweedledee; 
and  so  it  may  well  seem  to  a  connoisseur 
of  stale  platitudes,  angered  and  confused 
by  the  thought  of  a  new  age  impatient 
at  his  commonplaces.  For  him  the  rela- 
tion of  the  drama  to  the  theatre  is  exactly 
the  same  as  that  of  a  ship  to  the  sea.  A 
play  is  "a  ship  destined  to  be  launched 
in  a  given  element,  the  theatre.  Here," 
he  adds,  "Mr.  Spingarn  will  at  once  inter- 
rupt, and  say  that  many  plays  are  not 
so  destined."  But  Mr.  Spingarn  says 
nothing  of  the  kind.  What  he  really  says 
is  that,  rightly  considered,  710  plays  are  so 
destined.  Every  poet  in  the  world  may  or 
may  not  have  written  poems  for  money; 
it  is  a  problem  for  the  young  and  not  too 
discreet  tyro  in  the  economic  interpreta- 
tion of  history;  but  what  concern  is  it  of 
the  critic.''  For  him  no  poem  is  written 
for  money.  When  we  find  that  Mr. 
Archer  simply  cannot  understand  what  this 


92     CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

means, — when  we  find  that  he  cannot 
comprehend  the  distinction  between  util- 
ity and  beauty,  between  stimulus  and 
creative  impulse,  between  the  mechanical 
science  of  ship-building  and  the  spiritual 
act  of  artistic  creation, — what  can  we 
say  to  him?  What  is  it  possible  to  say 
except  that  such  a  critic  needs,  not  refuta- 
tion, but  a  new  education? 

So  after  wandering  through  the  centuries 
we  return  at  last  to  the  collection  of 
theatrical  antiquities  in  the  American 
University.  What  has  aesthetic  specula- 
tion from  Aristotle  to  Croce  to  tell  us 
about  this  so-called  "dramatic  museum"? 
Why,  that  it  contains  either  too  little  or  too 
much.  Too  much,  from  the  standpoint 
of  dramatic  criticism,  which  is  con- 
cerned with  externals,  including  the  thea- 
tre, only  in  so  far  as  they  appear  in  dra- 
matic literature  itself.  Too  little,  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  history  of  culture,  be- 
cause the  theatre  is  only  one,  and  a  very 
insignificant  one,  of  all  the  influences  that 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    93 

have   gone   to   make   up   dramatic   litera- 
ture. 

If  we  examine  the  life  of  any  dramatist 
from  -^schylus  to  Andreyev,  or  any  play 
from  Sakuntala  to  the  Playboy  of  the  West- 
ern World,  we  shall  find  a  thousand  influ- 
ences affecting  in  some  measure  the  artist 
and  his  work.  Hamlet,  for  instance,  is  the 
work  of  a  man  whose  father  (let  us  say)  was  a 
butcher,  and  whose  mother  a  gentlewoman; 
obviously,  to  understand  a  man  of  this  sort, 
we  should  study  the  effect  of  his  early 
visits  to  the  butcher's  shop  on  his  later 
work,  the  influence  of  gentle  birth  on 
character,  and  the  general  problem  of 
heredity.  Our  dramatic  museum  will  be 
incomplete  unless  it  contain  books  covering 
all  these  topics.  The  play  is  written  by  an 
Englishman,  and  who  can  tell  what  in- 
fluence this  fact  may  have  had  on  the 
nature  of  the  play.-*  Surely  the  museum 
should  provide  us  with  histories  of  Eng- 
land, Warwickshire,  Stratford,  London, 
and  with  every  conceivable  book  on  the 


94    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

life  and  habits  of  the  English  people. 
Hamlet  is  the  son  of  a  king,  and  we  should, 
of  course,  understand  the  ideals  of  royalty 
and  of  government  in  general  in  order  to 
appreciate  the  ideas  influencing  Shake- 
speare in  writing  the  play;  we  need  a  whole 
library  of  political  science.  Moral  ideas 
are  discussed  throughout  the  play;  where 
did  they  come  from?  The  museum  should 
furnish  us  with  a  library  on  the  history  of 
ethics.  Hamlet  is  rather  coarse  in  his 
language  to  Ophelia,  and  in  numerous 
other  ways  reflects  the  Renaissance  concep- 
tion of  woman  and  the  position  of  women; 
so  we  realize  that  our  museum  would  be  in- 
complete without  a  whole  library  on  woman, 
on  social  usages  and  customs,  on  dress,  and 
heaven  only  knows  what  else. 

But  why  continue.?  If  the  museum 
wishes  to  furnish  us  with  the  external  mate- 
rial which  influenced  dramatic  literature,  it 
should  furnish  us  with  all  the  books,  all 
the  men,  all  the  things,  that  have  existed 
side  by  side  with  the  drama  from  the  be- 


DRAMATIC    CRITICISM    95 

ginning  of  its  history  and  before;  for  all  of 
these  men,  or  books,  or  things  may  have 
had  a  larger  and  deeper  influence  than  the 
physical  theatre.  But  this,  after  all,  is  a 
problem  of  the  history  of  culture  and  not 
of  criticism.  If  we  wish  to  understand 
dramatic  literature  itself,  we  must  seek 
understanding  in  the  great  plays  and 
not  in  the  dead  material  out  of  which  plays 
are  made. 

A  collection  of  theatrical  bric-a-brac  may 
interest  and  enlighten  many  men, — ac- 
tors, impresarios,  stage-managers,  play- 
wrights, antiquaries,  dilettanti  of  all  sorts, 
even  University  teachers  of  dramatic 
literature,  and  who  shall  say  how  many 
others.''  This  essay  challenges,  not  the 
museum's  usefulness,  still  less  its  right  to 
existence,  but  only  the  theory  of  which  it  is 
a  concrete  expression;  and  from  this  point 
of  view  it  may  well  serve  another  useful 
purpose,  of  which  its  founders  perhaps  took 
no  thought, — as  a  sort  of  literary  "chamber 
of  horrors,"a  permanent  symbol  of  the  false 


96    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

theories  which  have  encumbered  the  dra- 
matic criticism  of  our  time.  For  the  true 
dramatic  critic  will  transfer  his  interest 
from  the  drama  itself  to  the  "laws  of  the 
theatre"  or  the  ''conditions  of  the  theatre" 
only  when  the  lover  studies  the  "laws  of 
love"  and  the  "conditions  of  love"  in- 
stead of  his  lady's  beauty  and  his  own  soul. 


PROSE   AND   VERSE 


PROSE    AND    VERSE 

Nothing  could  more  completely  prove 
the  poverty  of  American  criticism,  its  de- 
pendence on  the  decayed  and  genteel  tra- 
ditions of  Victorian  England,  and  its  hope- 
less chaos  in  the  face  of  new  realities  of 
art,  than  the  recent  discussions  of  the  freer 
forms  of  verse.  Both  the  friends  and  the 
enemies  of  vers  libres  have  confined  them- 
selves within  the  limits  of  this  narrow 
tradition;  and  the  loudest  advocates  of 
modernity  have  defended  their  taste  with 
the  same  stale  platitudes  as  its  foes.  It  is 
only  because  criticism  always  follows  in 
this  timid  and  halting  way  the  new  paths 
marked  by  the  footsteps  of  poets,  that 
we  need  not  assume  it  to  be  a  national 
trait  rather  than  a  universal  failing. 

It  would  be  useless  to  take  cognizance  of 
all  these  outworn  arguments,  or  to  con- 
cern  ourselves   with    the   merely   external 


loo    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

history  of  these  freer  forms,  from  the  days 
when  Commodianus  was  accused  of  play- 
ing havoc  with  the  traditional  music  of 
the  Latin  hexameter.  But  one  of  the  most 
extraneous  arguments  must  be  dismissed 
at  the  outset.  The  admirers  of  vers  lihres 
have  praised  them  because  they  are  "demo- 
cratic," while  some  of  their  enemies  have 
actually  found  fault  with  them  because 
they  are  "undemocratic,"  because  they 
lack  the  regular  beats  which  the  true 
poetry  of  the  people  has  always  employed 
for  communal  effort.  But  democracy  is 
a  political  ideal,  and  since  when  has  a 
political  ideal  acquired  the  right  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  touchstone  for  poets  ^  Dante's 
Roman  Imperialism,  Shakespeare's  aristoc- 
racy, Carducci's  republicanism,  Shelley's 
democracy,  all  prove  that  one  political  ideal 
is  as  good  as  another  as  material  for  poetry, 
and  that  the  problem  for  criticism  to 
attack  is  not  the  political  ideals  of  the 
poet  but  the  poetry  which  he  has  made  out 
of  them.    To  go  still  farther,  and  to  make 


PROSE    AND    VERSE        loi 

politics  a  touchstone  of  rhythm  and  metre, 
is  to  leave  the  world  of  criticism  and  to 
enter  that  of  Alice  in  Wonderland,  where 
we  might  expect  the  talent  of  a  poet  to  be 
tested  by  his  opinions  on  the  canals  in 
Mars,  or  by  his  ability  to  eat  as  many 
oysters  as  the  Walrus  and  the  Carpenter. 
Only  in  a  world  where  commas  are  Budd- 
hist and  exclamation  points  Mohamme- 
dan will  it  be  reasonable  to  ask  whether 
iambs  and  trochees  are  democratic  or  the  re- 
verse. How  can  poetry,  or  any  form  in 
which  it  expresses  itself,  whose  very  right 
to  existence  depends  on  its  life,  its  reality, 
its  imaginative  power,  be  judged  by  a  mere 
abstraction?  It  is  the  ever  recurring  mal- 
ady of  critics, — to  formulate  new  abstrac- 
tions on  the  basis  of  a  dead  art,  and  to 
"wish  them"  on  the  artists  of  a  day  still 
living. 

No,  if  we  wish  to  understand  the  ever 
changing  forms  of  art,  we  must  subdue  our 
minds  to  every  new  expression,  before  wc 
can  hope  to  rise  above  it,  and  explain,  in 


I02    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

ever  new  and  changing  syntheses,  its  real 
meaning  and  the  secret  of  its  power.  The 
direction  which  this  new  synthesis  must 
take  in  the  case  of  vers  libres  may  best  be 
understood  after  analyzing  and  explaining 
some  older  and  outworn  ones. 

Over  two  thousand  years  ago  the  question 
of  the  relationship  of  poetry  and  prose  was 
opened  for  discussion  by  the  Greeks,  and 
the  problem,  as  they  stated  it,  is  still 
agitating  the  minds  of  men  to-day.  The 
weightiest  of  Greek  arguments  amounts 
to  this :  that  the  test  of  poetry  is  not  the  use 
of  prose  or  verse,  but  imaginative  power, 
for  if  metre  were  the  real  test,  a  rhymed 
treatise  on  law  or  medicine  would  be  poetry 
and  a  tragedy  in  prose  would  not.  This  is 
Aristotle's  thesis,  and  no  critic  or  thinker 
in  these  two  thousand  years  has  been  able 
to  reason  it  away.  But  neither  Aristotle 
nor  any  of  his  successors  through  the 
centuries  has  ever  doubted  the  separate 
existence  of  prose  and  verse;  those  who 
admit  his  argument  and  those  who  deny 


PROSE    AND    VERSE        103 

it  alike  agree  in  conceiving  of  prose  and 
verse  as  separate  and  distinct  entities, 
each  with  its  own  characteristics  and  its 
own  Hfe.  Poetry  and  verse  may  or  may 
not  be  identical  terms  for  them,  but  for 
all  of  them  prose  and  verse  are  different 
and  distinct.  But  are  prose  and  verse 
different  and  distinct?  Modern  thinking 
has  something  new  to  say  on  this  subject, 
and  something  that  leads  us  to  a  new 
attitude  toward  the  whole  question  of 
versification. 

It  is  always  safest  to  attack  a  problem 
first  on  its  most  external  and  superficial 
side;  and  so  we  may  begin  by  examining 
some  examples  of  the  infinite  variety  of 
rhythm  in  human  speech.  Here  is  a  coup- 
let from  Pope's  early  Pastorals: 

"Let  vernal  airs  through  osiers  play, 
And  Albion's  cliflFs  resound  the  lay." 

Regularity  in  rhythm  could  hardly  go 
farther;  there  is  an  almost  mathematical 
succession   of  beats   or   accents.      But    in 


I04    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

these  lines  from  a  blank  verse  play  of 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher  there  is  less  reg- 
ularity : 

"  I'll  look  thee  out  a  knight  shall  make  thee  a 

lady  too, 
A  lusty  knight,  and  one  that  shall  be  ruled  by 

thee; 
And  add  to  these,  I'll  make  'em  good.     No 

mincing, 
No  ducking  out  of  nicety,  good  lady, 
But  do  it  home." 

We  can  follow  the  faint  shadow  of  regular 
metre  through  these  lines,  but  they  cer- 
tainly do  not  follow  the  accepted  concep- 
tion of  blank  verse.  The  Spoon  River 
Anthology  goes  a  step  farther: 

"Over  and  over  they  used  to  ask  me, 

While  buying  the  wine  or  the  beer, 

In  Peoria  first,  and  later  in  Chicago, 

Denver,  Frisco,  New  York,  wherever  I  lived, 

How  I  happened  to  live  the  life, 

And  what  was  the  start  of  it." 

Some  haunting  sense  of  metre  is  here  too, 
not  the  regular  succession  of  classical  tra- 


PROSE    AND    VERSE        105 

dition,  but  still  some  pattern  of  music  in 
the  mind  of  the  artist  that  we  can  search 
for  and  discover.  Shall  we  say  that  there 
is  no  sense  of  regular  rhythm,  fainter  but 
still  present,  in  this  passage  from  Dc 
Quincey's  prose: 

"The  case  /  was  the  same  /  precisely  /  as 
when  /  Ricardo  announced  /  beforehand  /  that 
we  should  neglect  /  the  variations  /  in  the 
value  /  of  money.  /  What  could  be  /  the 
use  /  of  stating  /  every  /  proposition  /  as  to 
price  /  three  times  over;  /  first,  /  in  the 
contingency  /  of  money  /  remaining  /  station- 
ary; /  secondly,  /  in  the  contingency  /  of  its 
rising;  /  thirdly,  /  in  the  contingency  /  of  its 
falling.''  /  Such  /  an  eternal  fugue  /  of  itera- 
tions, /  such  /  a  Welsh  triad  of  cases,  / 
would  treble  /  the  labor  /  of  writer  /  and 
reader,  /  without  doing  /  the  slightest  /  ser- 
vice /  to  either.  /  " 

These  four  examples  illustrate,  as  well 
perhaps  as  a  thousand,  the  variations  and 
gradations  of  rhythm  used  by  men  in 
expressing  their  thoughts.  They  differ 
in  the  degree  of  their  regularity  of  rhythm, 


io6    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

but  there  is  no  place  where  we  can  sharply 
divide  them  in  respect  to  their  essential 
nature,  and  say  that  here  verse  ends  and 
here  prose  begins.  All  we  can  say  is 
that  out  of  the  infinite  variations  of 
rhythm,  we  may  conveniently  classify  the 
more  irregular  as  prose  and  the  more  regu- 
lar as  verse. 

We  may  go  still  further  and  take  two  lines 
in  which  two  poets  appear  to  aim  at  the 
same  succession  of  beats  or  accents, — 
where  they  have  apparently  used  the  same 
"metre."  Compare  this  line  of  Shake- 
speare: 

"In  his  study  of  imagination" 

with  this  of  Milton: 

"Rocks,  caves,  lakes,  fens,   bogs,   dens,  and 
shades  of  death." 

In  theory  these  lines  conform  to  the  same 
metrical  arrangement.  Both  are  in  blank 
verse,  with  the  same  traditional  succession 
of  five  accented  feet;  yet  who  can  fail  to 


PROSE    AND    VERSE        107 

see  that  they  differ  from  each  other  as 
widely  as  Pope's  verse  from  DeQuincey's 
prose?  But  we  need  not  go  to  two  dif- 
ferent poets;  if  we  take  any  two  succeed- 
ing lines  from  the  same  poet,  in  the  same 
poem,  and  in  what  would  be  convention- 
ally called  the  same  metre,  though  the 
difference  may  not  be  so  striking,  we  are 
forced  to  the  same  conclusion: 

"Thy  rare  gold  ring  of  verse  (the  poet  praised) 
Linking  our  England  to  his  Italy." 

So  that  not  only  is  there  no  sharp  line 
dividing  prose  and  verse,  but  whatever  dis- 
tinction exists  between  words  in  metre 
and  words  without  it  exists  in  exactly  the 
same  way  between  verses  written  in  the 
same  metre. 

But  the  problem  is,  after  all,  far  more 
fundamental  than  that.  It  has  been 
touched  only  on  its  most  external,  indeed 
on  a  wholly  negligible,  side,  and  the  ques- 
tions that  go  to  the  heart  of  the  whole 
matter  have  not  yet  been  asked:  In  what 


io8     CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

sense  can  we  say  that  verses  written  in  the 
same  metre, — the  four  just  quoted,  or  any 
others  that  might  possibly  be  quoted, — 
have  anything  in  common  merely  because 
there  is  a  somewhat  similar  succession  of 
syllables  and  accents?  In  what  sense  does 
this  purely  external  resemblance  help  to 
explain  their  music,  their  meaning,  or  their 
power?  When  we  are  concerned  with  this 
external  resemblance,  however  great  we 
may  admit  the  resemblance  to  be,  are  we 
not  occupied  with  quite  another  problem 
than  the  one  which  is  the  real  concern  of 
criticism,  the  problem  of  the  special  and 
unique  quality  of  a  poet's  work? 

To  answer  these  questions  is  to  lift  the 
discussion  out  of  the  arid  field  of  versifica- 
tion into  the  realm  where  it  rightly  be- 
longs, that  of  aesthetic  criticism  and 
aesthetic  thought.  This  is  where  the  dis- 
cussion has  of  late  been  lifted  by  a  group 
of  modern  thinkers,  and  this  is  where 
it  must  hereafter  remain.  For  they 
have    made    clear    the    fundamental    dis- 


PROSE    AND    VERSE        109 

tinction  between  the  mechanical  whirr 
of  machinery,  or  the  ticking  of  a  clock, 
and  the  inner  or  spiritual  rhythm  of  human 
speech.  They  have  made  clear  that  only 
physical  things  can  be  measured,  and  that 
what  can  be  so  measured  in  a  poet's  verse, 
or  in  any  work  of  art,  is  without  artistic 
value,  and  a  matter  of  complete  indif- 
ference for  all  true  criticism.  They  have 
made  it  clear,  in  a  word,  that  rhythm 
and  metre  must  be  regarded  as  aesthetically 
identical  with  style,  as  style  is  identical 
with  artistic  form,  and  form  in  its  turn  is 
the  work  of  art  in  its  spiritual  and  in- 
divisible self.  Only  those  who  regard 
style,  or  form,  as  something  that  can  be 
added  to,  or  subtracted  from,  a  work  of 
art,  will  ever  again  conceive  of  metre  as 
something  separate  from  the  life  of  the 
poem  itself,  as  a  poet's  dainty  trills  or 
coloratura  instead  of  the  music  of  his 
whole  manner  of  being. 

Yet  poetry  is  not  unlike  all  the  other  facts 
of  life;  it  is  possible  to  approach  it  from 


no    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

many  angles,  to  study  it  from  many  points 
of  view.  You  love  a  friend;  you  admire 
his  charm  of  manner,  his  frankness  or  his 
courtesy,  his  honor  or  honesty,  his  in- 
telligence, his  taste,  his  buoyant  spirits,  his 
handsome  face,  even  his  glowing  health; 
but  ultimately  you  love  him  for  the  person- 
ality that  makes  him  himself,  the  personal- 
ity that  is  compounded  of  all  these  qualities 
yet  is  independent  of  them  all.  But  you 
recognize  that  it  is  possible  and  proper  to 
consider  him  in  any  one  of  these  ways  by 
itself,  and  even  in  others.  He  is  a  human 
being,  and  the  anatomist  or  physiologist 
can  tell  you  secrets  of  his  bones  and  blood 
that  are  hidden  from  you.  You  do  not 
doubt  the  value  of  anatomy  or  physiology, 
in  its  own  field,  when  you  say  that  it  can 
tell  you  nothing  to  explain  why  you  loved 
this  particular  friend  so  naturally  and  so 
well. 

Poetry,  too,  can  be  studied  as  a  dead 
thing  no  less  than  as  a  living  and  breath- 
ing power.     The  words   and  syllables  of 


PROSE    AND    VERSE        iii 

which  it  is  compounded  may  be  counted, 
tabulated,  and  analyzed;  the  succession  of 
its  external  accents  may  be  enumerated 
and  compared;  the  history  of  each  word 
traced  back  to  some  ancient  source. 
Etymology,  versification,  syntax  are  re- 
spectable sciences,  and  have  their  proper 
place  in  the  wide  field  of  human  knowledge. 
They  are  the  anatomy  or  physiology  of 
poetry.  But  they  do  not  help  us  to  under- 
stand the  secret  of  poetic  power,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  poetic  power  is  inde- 
pendent of  accidental  and  external  resem- 
blances. The  fact  that  two  lines  have  the 
same  external  succession  of  beats  or  ac- 
cents, conform  or  do  not  conform  to  the 
same  "metre,"  follow  or  do  not  follow  some 
traditional  system  of  versification,  tells 
us  no  more  about  their  intrinsic  quality 
as  poetry  than  the  fact  that  two  men  have 
the  same  bones  or  the  same  lymphatic 
system  tells  us  about  their  special  quali- 
ties as  statesmen,  as  friends,  or  as 
men. 


112    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

What  Is  true  of  metre  is  also  aesthetically 
true  of  language  itself.  To  speak  of  "  learn- 
ing a  language"  is  to  risk  the  danger  of 
the  same  confusion,  for  we  do  not  learn 
language,  we  learn  how  to  create  it.  That 
is  why  it  is  so  wide  of  the  mark  to  explain 
English  words  in  terms  of  their  continental 
antecedents,  or  to  justify  modern  slang 
on  the  ground  of  its  similarity  to  some 
foreign  or  classical  usage.  It  has  recently 
been  urged,  for  example,  that  "to  sail 
into  a  man"  is  a  vivid  and  powerful 
phrase,  because  (of  all  reasons!)  the  Latin- 
ism  "to  inveigh  against  a  man"  means 
the  same  thing.  But  the  Latinism  in  this 
case  helps  to  explain  the  English  phrase 
as  much  as  the  disinterred  skeleton  of  a 
thirteenth  century  English  yeoman  helps 
to  explain  the  personality  of  John  Mase- 
field.  To  deal  with  abstract  classifications 
instead  of  artistic  realities, — versification 
instead  of  poetry,  grammar  instead  of 
language,  technique  instead  of  painting, 
— is  to  confuse  form  as  concrete  expres- 


PROSE    AND    VERSE        113 

sion  with  form  as  an  ornament  or  a  dead 
husk. 

The  essential  truth,  then,  is  this, — 
that  poets  are  forever  creating  new 
rhythms,  not  reproducing  old  ones,  a  feat 
only  possible  for  the  phonograph.  It  will 
always  be  convenient  and  proper  to  iden- 
tify and  classify  the  new  rhythms  by  their 
superficial  resemblance  to  the  old  ones; 
and  so  we  shall  continue  to  speak  of 
"anapaests,"  "trochees,"  "heroic  coup- 
lets," or  "blank  verse,"  at  least  until 
better  terms  are  invented,  just  as  we 
speak  of  tall  men  and  short  men,  large 
books  and  small  books,  without  assum- 
ing that  the  adjectives  imply  fundamen- 
tal distinctions  of  quality  or  character. 
But  a  classification  intended  merely  for 
convenience  can  never  furnish  a  vital 
basis  for  criticism;  and  for  criticism  the 
question  of  versification,  as  something 
separate  from  the  inner  texture  of  poetry, 
simply  does  not  exist. 


CREATIVE  CONNOISSEUR 
SHIP 


CREATIVE    CONNOISSEUR- 
SHIP 

(Letter  to  an  Artist  on  the  International  Exhi- 
bition, February,  1913) 

'  To  enjoy  is,  as  it  were,  to  create;  to  under- 
stand is  a  form  of  equality,  and  the  full  use 
of  taste  is  an  act  of  genius." — John  La  Farge's 
Considerations  on  Painting. 

The  opening  night  of  the  International 
Exhibition  seemed  to  me  one  of  the  most 
exciting  adventures  I  have  experienced, 
and  this  sense  of  excitement  was  shared 
by  almost  every  one  who  was  present.  It 
was  not  merely  the  stimulus  of  color,  or 
the  riot  of  sensuous  appeal,  or  the  elation 
that  is  born  of  a  successful  venture,  or 
the  feeling  that  one  had  shared,  however 
humbly,  in  an  historical  occasion.  For 
my  own  part,  and  I  can  only  speak  for 
myself,  what  moved  me  so  strongly  was 


ii8    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

this:  I  felt  for  the  first  time  that  art  was 
recapturing  its  own  essential  madness  at 
last,  and  that  the  modern  painter  and 
sculptor  had  won  for  himself  a  title  of 
courage  that  was  lacking  in  all  the  other 
fields  of  art. 

For  after  all,  though  it  needs  repeating 
in  every  civilization,  madness  and  courage 
are  the  very  life  of  all  art.  From  the  days 
of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  who  both  shared 
the  Greek  conception  of  genius  as  a  form 
of  madness,  to  the  Elizabethan  poet  who 
said  of  Marlowe: 

"For  that  fine  madness  still  he  did  retain 
Which  rightly  should  possess  a  poet's  brain"; 

and  from  the  sturdy  and  robust  Dryden, 
with  his 

"Great  wits  are  sure  to  madness  near  allied," 

to  the  living  poet  who  writes 

"He  ate  the  laurel  and  is  mad," 


CONNOISSEURS  HIP       119 

all  who  have  given  any  real  thought  to 
art  or  beauty  have  recognized  this  essen- 
tial truth, — seeing  in  the  poet's  "mad- 
ness" not  something  for  the  physician  to 
diagnose,  but  fancy's  eternal  contrast  with 
the  common  sense  of  a  practical  world. 
"Sense,  sense,  nothing  but  sense!"  cried 
the  German  poet;  "as  if  poetry  in  contrast 
with  prose  were  not  always  a  kind  of 
nonsense."  The  virtue  of  an  industrial 
society  is  that  it  is  always  more  or  less 
sane.  The  virtue  of  all  art  is  that  it  is 
always  more  or  less  mad.  All  the  greater  is 
our  American  need  of  art's  tonic  loveliness, 
and  all  the  more  difficult  is  it  for  us  to 
recapture  the  inherent  madness  without 
which  she  cannot  speak  or  breathe. 

You,  I  know,  will  not  confuse  this 
theory  of  poetic  madness,  to  which  poets 
themselves  have  given  their  faith,  with 
the  pseudo-scientific  theories,  current  not 
many  years  ago,  which  pictured  poets  as 
"degenerate,"  "neurotic,"  or  "mentally 
unbalanced."     You  will  not  confuse  spirit- 


I20    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

ual  exaltation  with  physical  disease.  For 
the  madness  of  poets  is  nothing  more  or 
less  than  unhampered  freedom  of  self- 
expression.  Those  of  us  for  whom  self- 
expression  is  checked  by  inner  or  outer 
inhibitions  must  always  look  with  some- 
thing of  amazement  at  those  who  can  and 
do  express  themselves  freely.  For  us  they 
must  always  seem  "mad."  To  let  one's 
self  go — that  is  what  art  is  always  aim- 
ing at,  and  American  art  needs  most  of  all. 
It  is  in  this  sense  that  America  needs  the 
tonic  madness  of  poets. 

But  here  was  the  poet's  madness,  and 
here  was  courage  that  did  not  fear  to  be 
mad.  I  confess  that  when  I  left  the  ex- 
hibition my  feeling  was  not  merely  one 
of  excitement,  but  mingled  with  it  was 
a  real  depression  at  the  thought  that  no 
other  artists  shared  this  courage  of  the 
painters  of  our  time.  How  timid  seemed 
our  poetry  and  our  drama  and  our  prose 
fiction;  how  conventional  and  pusillani- 
mous our  literary  and  dramatic  criticism; 


CONNOISSEURSHIP      121 

how  faded,  and  academic,  and  anaemic 
every  other  form  of  artistic  expression. 
But  these  painters  and  sculptors  had 
really  dared  to  express  themselves.  Wrong- 
headed,  mistaken,  capricious,  some  of  them 
may  be;  but  at  least  they  have  the  sine  qua 
non  of  art,  the  courage  to  express  them- 
selves without  equivocating  with  their 
souls.  Some  of  them  may  have  forgotten 
that  the  imagination  is  governed  by  an 
inner  logic  of  its  own,  and  not  by  unreason- 
able caprice;  but  even  caprice  is  better  than 
tameness,  even  caprice  is  better  than  the 
lifeless  logic  of  the  schools. 

And  this  leads  me  to  what  is  really  the 
inspiring  cause  of  this  letter,  to  the  ques- 
tion that  must  occur  to  every  mind:  What 
have  the  patrons  of  art,  the  great  Ameri- 
can collectors,  who  are  the  envy  and  target 
of  the  world,  what  have  they  done  for  this 
exhibition,  or  for  the  artists  who  give  it 
its  flavor  and  power,  and  especially  for 
the  younger  American  artists  who  had  the 
imagination  and  skill  to  bring  it  together? 


122     CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

Did  the  masters  of  our  national  sanity 
encourage  any  of  this  divine  madness;  did 
they  grapple  with  the  pioneer  work  that 
you  men  are  doing;  or  have  they  preferred 
to  make  timid  but  solid  investments  in 
the  art  whose  original  madness  has  been 
tamed,  and  placed  beyond  all  question, 
by  time? 

We  have  heard  altogether  too  much  of 
the  service  which  has  been  rendered  by 
these  "fake  Lorenzo  de'  Medicis"  of  our 
time.  I  am  tired  of  hearing  that  they  have 
despoiled  Europe  and  Asia  of  their  treas- 
ures, and  have  filled  not  only  their  own 
homes,  but  public  museums  and  libraries, 
with  models  of  older  beauty.  I  have  lived 
many  hours  in  that  Renaissance  of  which 
Lorenzo  was  one  of  the  flowers;  and  when 
I  come  back  to  my  own  country  I  find 
nothing  that  gives  me  less  hope  for  its 
future  than  these  very  patrons  and  col- 
lectors who  would  ape  his  glory.  For  the 
very  essence  of  his  power  is  hidden  from 
them.     The  soul  of  his  purpose  is  at  war 


CONNOISSEURSHIP      123 

with  theirs.  Theirs  is  at  bottom  acquis- 
itiveness, his  at  bottom  creativeness.  For 
(it  cannot  be  repeated  too  often)  to  enjoy 
and  understand  a  work  of  art  is  to  own 
it,  in  the  only  sense  in  which  art  takes 
cognizance  of  ownership;  there  is  no  other 
way  to  possess  it  except  to  Hve  again 
the  vision  which  the  artist  creates.  But 
under  all  the  garments  that  hide  their  pur- 
pose and  make  it  fair,  the  desire  to  "shop", 
the  hunger  for  other  forms  of  property 
beside  real  estate  and  stocks  and  bonds, 
remain  their  real  and  unmistakable  mo- 
tives. His  motive  was  as  different  from 
theirs  as  the  sexual  passion,  creating  life 
even  without  knowing  it,  is  different  from 
the  desire  to  own  slaves. 

For  look  at  Lorenzo's  palace.  Political 
and  financial  intrigue  as  real  as  any  in  the 
offices  of  the  "interests"  was  harbored 
there.  But  inside  the  same  palace  lived 
poets  and  scholars,  philosophers  and  paint- 
ers, architects  and  engineers.  All  the 
world    knows    his    architect   Brunelleschi, 


124    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

his  philosophers  Ficino  and  Landino,  his 
poets  Poliziano  and  Luigi  Pulci,  his  schol- 
ars Pico  della  Mirandola  and  Barbaro, 
not  to  mention  the  horde  of  painters  and 
craftsmen  who  haunted  his  city  and  his 
house.  Poliziano,  one  of  the  loveliest  of 
all  Italian  poets,  seems  almost  the  product 
of  his  patronage,  if  it  is  proper  to  speak 
of  a  beautiful  flower  as  the  "product"  of 
the  gardener  who  waters  it  and  gives  it  a 
fruitful  soil.  He  did  not  merely  load 
his  rooms  with  the  dead  weight  of  dead 
centuries;  he  created,  and  fostered  crea- 
tion in  others.  And  yet  this  was  a  mer- 
chant prince,  like  our  own  merchant 
princes;  the  inheritor  of  no  greater  power 
than  theirs,  the  holder  of  no  official  posi- 
tion in  the  State  that  the  prestige  of  his 
family  did  not  earn  for  itself  in  the  democ- 
racy of  Florence. 

But  where  is  Morgan's  Poliziano,  where 
is  Widener's  Ficino.''  Where  are  the  poems 
they  have  themselves  written,  as  Lorenzo 
wrote    his    own    Ambra,    his    own    lovely 


CONNOISSEURSHIP      125 

Nencia  da  Barbarino?  Where  are  the 
pageants  and  dramas  they  have  composed 
or  fostered,  where  the  popular  Muse  (out  of 
the  mouths  of  the  very  rabble)  that  they 
have  encouraged  and  refined?  Where  are 
the  painters  and  scholars,  poets  and 
philosophers,  dreamers  and  craftsmen  of 
all  kinds,  who  haunt  their  houses  in  the 
real  intimacy  that  the  old  Renaissance 
fostered  between  prince  and  genius  ?  While 
the  Medicis  made  all  Florence  fertile  with 
artistic  life,  these  Americans,  these  fake 
Medicis, — so  full  of  a  power  that  seems 
dynamic  and  creative  in  the  field  of  ac- 
tion, so  colorless  and  timid  in  the  field  of 
taste, — have  merely  hung  cold  treasures 
in  coy  corners  of  remote  aloofness  that  are 
now  their  graves  as  well  as  their  homes. 

But  connoisseurship  has  its  living  as  well 
as  its  dead  side.  If  we  were  merely  con- 
cerned with  a  craft  that,  in  the  presence 
of  beautiful  pictures,  asked  nothing  but 
their  age,  their  genuineness,  their  previous 
ownership,  the  meaning  of  their  symbols 


126    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

and  signatures,  we  might  dismiss  it  without 
ado  from  our  thoughts.  For  these  are  all 
problems  with  little  or  no  aesthetic  signifi- 
cance, and  have  hardly  more  importance 
than  the  question  of  commercial  values. 
But  it  is  on  a  wholly  different  side  that 
connoisseurship  may  become  dynamic  and 
creative.  The  collector,  the  patron,  the 
critic  have  their  common  meeting  ground 
in  the  realm  of  taste.  To  understand  and 
enjoy  beauty  is  their  common  bond;  to 
re-create  in  their  own  souls  the  artist's 
vision  of  reality  is  at  once  their  triumph 
and  their  joy.  If  they  really  express  their 
own  taste,  instead  of  aping  the  taste 
of  others,  the  work  they  do  may  be  said 
to  be  creative  like  the  artist's.  Only  this 
creative  flowering  of  their  own  personali- 
ties may  be  called  taste  in  any  real  sense; 
only  this  creative  taste  has  a  value  for 
themselves  or  others. 

For  after  all,  patrons  and  collectors,  prizes 
and  rewards,  boards  and  foundations  have 
no  significance  for  the  artist,  but  only  for 


CONNOISSEURSHIP       127 

the  society  which  they  represent.  For 
art  is  not  a  flower  that  needs  only  watering 
and  a  fruitful  soil  to  make  it  flourish;  the 
gardener's  kindly  help  is  just  as  likely  to 
kill  it  as  to  give  it  a  new  vigor.  The  para- 
ble of  the  poet  who  withers  in  a  gilded 
chamber  is  the  perennial  symbol  of  art. 
Nothing  outside  of  it  seems  really  to  help 
or  to  hinder;  out  of  its  own  life  it  musters 
the  mysterious  power  that  helps  it  to 
speak  or  to  be  silent.  So  it  is  for  their 
own  sake,  and  not  for  the  artist's,  that  the 
patron  and  the  collector  should  cultivate 
the  madness  of  poets.  They  may  enrich 
the  life  and  culture  of  the  society  of  which 
they  are  a  part,  even  though  they  can 
render  no  service  to  art.  This  is  true  of 
democracies  as  well  as  aristocracies: 
whether  the  patrons  and  collectors  be 
few  or  many,  whether  they  be  rich  or 
poor,  whether  they  belong  to  a  narrow 
circle  to  which  the  countersign  is  an  heir- 
loom from  the  past  or  include  the  whole 
wide  range  of  human  life,  the  problem  re- 


128    CREATIVE    CRITICISM 

mains  exactly  the  same.  Sympathy  for 
self-expression,  and  the  power  to  under- 
stand and  enjoy  it,  are  independent  of  gov- 
ernment in  its  varying  forms;  they  are 
spiritual  realities,  and  live  in  a  world  in 
which  political  abstractions  and  adminis- 
trative details  are  merely  shadows.  That  is 
why  the  flowering  of  taste  remains  always  a 
symbol  of  the  higher  life  of  every  age  and 
every  civilization. 

So  our  patrons  and  collectors,  our 
amateurs  and  dilettanti,  and  all  who  wish 
to  share  the  artist's  vision  of  reality,  can 
do  something  for  America,  and  still  more 
for  themselves,  without  waiting  for  to- 
morrow. They  can  attend  the  Interna- 
tional Exhibition;  they  can  learn  its  les- 
sons and  enjoy  or  buy  its  pictures.  They 
can  share  the  artist's  "madness,"  if  only 
for  a  few  heightened  moments,  and  by  their 
oneness  with  him  in  spirit  once  more  justify 
the  essential  equality  of  genius  and  taste. 
They  can  help  to  make  collecting  itself  a 
creative  art,  instead  of  a  miser's  hoarding 


CONNOISSEURSHIP       129 

lust.  It  is  a  choice  between  artistic  life 
and  artistic  stagnation  or  death;  and  if 
you  and  your  colleagues  had  done  nothing 
more  than  to  make  possible,  for  us  to-day, 
this  ideal  of  creative  collecting,  the  time 
and  energy  and  insight  you  have  spent  on 
this  work  would  be  more  than  worth  while. 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 

A  NOTE  ON  GENIUS  AND  TASTE 

Some  time  ago,  Mr.  John  Galsworthy  took 
issue  with  the  theory,  advanced  in  "The  New 
Criticism,"  in  regard  to  the  identity  of  genius 
and  taste.  He  found  "the  'new  critic's'  point 
of  view  most  interesting,"  but  he  felt  that  it 
expressed  "something  that  is  not  quite  the 
truth."  For  him  there  is  no  fundamental  re- 
semblance between  the  critic  and  the  creator, 
and  he  sums  up  the  difference  between  them 
by  saying  that  the  critic  "is  absolutely  tied 
to  the  terms  of  the  work  that  he  is  interpreting, 
whereas  the  very  essence  of  creation  is  that 
roving,  gathering,  discovering  process  of  mind 
and  spirit  which  goes  before  the  commence- 
ment of  a  work  of  art.  This  process  is  un- 
trammelled by  anything  except  the  limits 
of  the  artist's  own  personality.  The  real 
creative  artist  is  in  these  words  of  brusquer 
stuff." 

This  is  a  very  pretty  distinction;  but  even 
if  it  did  not  involve  a  serious  misconception  ot 
the  function   of   aesthetic  criticism,  it  would 


134  APPENDIX 

certainly  eliminate  some  very  great  works  of 
art  from  the  category  of  "creation."  In  what 
sense,  for  instance,  is  the  portrait  painter  less 
trammelled  by  his  subject  than  the  critic  by 
his  books  or  pictures?  The  painter  re-creates 
the  men  and  women  who  are  sitting  before 
him,  he  does  not  merely  reproduce  them;  but 
criticism,  if  it  performs  its  true  function,  re- 
creates in  the  same  way  the  work  of  art  which 
is  the  subject  of  its  interpretation.  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy would  hardly  say  that  the  portrait 
painter  is  not  a  creator,  because  he  is  tram- 
melled or  limited  by  something  beside  his  own 
personality,  at  least  to  the  same  extent  as  the 
critic, — because  his  own  personality  cannot 
wholly  escape  from  the  fate  imposed  upon  it  by 
the  likeness  of  the  sitter.  Who  would  dare  to 
say  that  Velasquez's  portrait  of  Philip  IV, 
Raphael's  Castiglione,  Rembrandt's  portrait 
of  himself,  Manet's  Zola,  and  Renoir's  Daugh- 
ters of  Catulle  Mendes,  or  the  superb  Chinese 
portraits  of  the  T'ang  and  Sung  periods  that 
antedate  yet  equal  them  all,  are  not  works  of 
art,  are  criticism  and  not  creation,  merely  be- 
cause the  "  roving,  gathering,  discovering  proc- 
ess of  mind"  is  not  so  obvious  in  them  as  in 
some  other  forms  of  art? 

But  Mr.  Galsworthy  has  answered  that  ques- 
tion himself.  The  very  work  of  art  which 
he  cites  as  "the  finest  piece  of  creative  painting 


APPENDIX  135 

in  the  world,"  La  Gioconda,  is  the  portrait  of  a 
Neapolitan  lady,  Monna  Lisa,  wife  of  Zanobi 
del  Giocondo.  Heaven  forbid  that  we  should 
say  that  it  is  merely  a  portrait,  as  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy seems  to  think  the  critic's  "portrait" 
of  Shakespeare  or  Shelley  is  merely  a  portrait! 
But  if  Mr.  Galsworthy  must  seek  his  supreme 
work  of  art  from  the  very  form  which  is  most 
trammelled  and  least  "roving"  or  "gather- 
ing," he  has  destroyed  his  own  argument;  and 
he  seems  to  have  recognized  this  himself,  for 
in  developing  the  same  thought  since,  in  the 
Inn  of  Tranquillity,  he  has  sought  security 
by  omitting  all  his  earlier  illustrations.  Some 
forms  of  art  are  more  "roving"  and  "gather- 
ing" than  others,  but  limitations  or  tram- 
mels of  this  sort  have  nothing  to  do  with  the 
vital  essence  that  distinguishes  art  from  non- 
art.  When  the  critic's  vision  reaches  beyond 
the  single  artist  to  the  artists  of  a  whole  period 
or  a  whole  nation,  and  aims  at  a  series  of  por- 
traits embodying  the  artistic  life  of  a  people 
in  a  single  framework,  the  possibilities  of  selec- 
tion and  discovery  are  as  great  as  in  any  novel. 
Only  those  familiar  with  a  supreme  work 
of  criticism  like  the  history  of  Italian  litera- 
ture by  Francesco  de  Sanctis  can  realize  the 
wide  range  of  selective  skill  and  imaginative 
power  possible  for  criticism  at  its  amplest  and 
best. 


136  APPENDIX 

Neither  do  Mr.  Galsworthy's  other  illustra- 
tions bear  out  his  theories.  Contrast,  he  says, 
a  creative  work  like  Leonardo's  picture  with  a 
critical  work  like  Pater's  essay  about  the  pic- 
ture, and  you  will  discover  that  the  picture  and 
the  essay  illustrate  two  types  of  temperament, 
the  creative  and  the  critical;  one  is  of  brusquer 
stuff  than  the  other.  But  to  me  this  proves 
little  except  the  difference  between  two  widely 
different  personalities.  It  needs  little  argu- 
ment to  prove  that  the  "universal  man"  of 
the  Renaissance  is  made  of  brusquer  stuff  than 
the  Victorian  "don."  Leonardo  and  Michel- 
angelo are  of  brusquer  stuff  than  Millais  and 
Leighton.  The  Renaissance  critics  whom 
Nisard  has  called  "literary  gladiators"  are  of 
brusquer  stuff  than  Raphael  and  Correggio. 
But  this  does  not  touch  the  problem  of  the 
two  arts,  and  it  would  not  be  difficult,  I  think, 
to  point  out  that  the  art  of  Leonardo  and  the 
art  of  Pater  are  not  so  wide  apart  as  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy appears  to  believe;  that  both  are 
trammelled  by  their  subject-matter  in  the 
same  way,  but  that  both  are  alike  really  un- 
trammelled, for  both  works  re-create  their 
"subjects"  through  the  personality  of  the 
artist,  and  both  are,  in  their  different  ways, 
creative  works  of  art. 

But  if  the  discussion  must  be  limited  to  exter- 
nals, suppose  that  instead  of  Leonardo  and 


APPENDIX  137 

Pater,  I  select  Goethe's  critique  of  Hamlet  in 
Wilhelm  Meister  and  Matthew  Arnold's  poem 
of  Obermann.  Which  of  these  is  made  of  brus- 
quer  stuff?  Which  exhibits  "curiosity"  and 
the  other  characteristics  of  Mr.  Galsworthy's 
creator,  and  which  the  "ruminative  introspec- 
tion, the  necessary  egoism"  which  he  selects  as 
the  earmarks  of  the  critic?  In  what  sense  is 
Goethe's  "temperament"  here  distinctly  criti- 
cal in  Mr.  Galsworthy's  sense,  and  Arnold's  dis- 
tinctly creative?  Surely  Goethe's  critique 
("the  very  poetry  of  criticism,"  as  Carlyle, 
echoing  Schlegel,  calls  it)  has  all  the  char- 
acteristics of  the  conventional  "creator," 
Arnold's  poem  all  those  of  the  conventional 
"critic."  This,  I  take  it,  explains  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy's position:  he  has  in  mind  a  conventional 
conception  of  the  critic  and  another  conven- 
tional conception  of  the  creator,  and  he  has 
selected  two  artists,  more  or  less  at  random, 
because  they  seem  to  illustrate  this  conven- 
tional antithesis.  But  it  must  be  clear  that 
the  problem  is  not  so  simple  as  all  this,  and  a 
mind  so  "roving,  gathering,  discovering"  as 
Mr.  Galsworthy's  cannot  long  remain  con- 
tented with  an  arbitrary  and  outworn  theory 
of  art. 

Genius  and  taste  no  longer  mean  for  us  what 
they  meant  to  the  poets  and  critics  of  the 
Romantic  period.     Their  halo,  their  mystery. 


138  APPENDIX 

their  power  are  gone.  By  genius  is  now  merely 
meant  the  creative  faculty,  the  power  of  self- 
expression,  which  we  all  share  in  varying  de- 
grees. By  taste  is  meant  the  power  to  see  and 
understand  and  enjoy  the  self-expression  of 
others,  a  power  which  all  of  us  must  in  some 
measure  share  or  no  art  would  be  intelligible; 
all  of  us  have  something  at  least  of  what 
Sainte-Beuve  calls  "that  faculty  of  semi- 
metamorphosis,  which  is  at  once  the  play  and 
the  triumph  of  criticism."  We  are  all  geniuses; 
we  are  all  possessed  of  taste.  To  say  that 
the  two  faculties  are  in  their  essence  one  is 
not,  however,  to  say  that  criticism  and  crea- 
tion are  without  difference;  it  is  merely  to 
recognize  the  element  of  fundamental  kin- 
ship, j  For  it  still  remains  true  that  the  aesthetic 
critic,  in  his  moments  of  highest  power,  rises 
to  heights  where  he  is  at  one  with  the  creator 
whom  he  is  interpreting.  At  that  moment 
criticism  and  "creation"  are  one.j  That  the 
critic  does  not  always  live  on  this  high  level 
of  taste  and  feeling  need  not  be  disputed; 
even  Homer  nods,  even  the  greatest  creators 
of  the  world  sink  to  levels  of  less  than  crea- 
tive power.  But  that  is  their  function,  that 
is  their  goal;  and  it  is  only  from  this  point  of 
vantage  that  the  great  critic  can  understand 
and  interpret  the  great  "creator." 


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